learned to appreciate money. He had not asked for any receipt. His
attitude had been such that she had not even been able to mention that
subject.

Yet much as she liked Connor there were many things about him which
jarred on her. There was a hardness, always working to the surface like
rocks on a hard soil. Worst of all, sometimes she felt a degree of
uncleanliness about his mind and its working. She would not have
recoiled from these things had he been nearer her own age; but in a man
well over thirty she felt that these were fixed characteristics.

He was in all respects the antipode of David of Eden. It was easier to
be near Connor, but not so exciting. David wore her out, but he also was
marvelously stimulating. The dynamic difference was that Connor
sometimes inspired her with aversion, and David made her afraid. She was
roused out of her brooding by the voice of the gambler saying: "When a
woman begins to think, a man begins to swear."

She managed to smile, but these cheap little pat quotations which she
had found amusing enough at first now began to grate on her through
repetition. Just as Connor tagged and labeled his idea with this
aphorism, so she felt that Connor himself was tagged by them. She found
him considering her with some anxiety.

"You haven't begun to doubt me, Ruth?" he asked her.

And he put out his hand with a note of appeal. It was a new role for him
and she at once disliked it. She shook the hand heartily.

"That's a foolish thing to say," she assured him. "But--why does that
old man keep sneaking around us?"

It was Zacharias, who for some time had been prowling around the patio
trying to find something to do which would justify his presence.

"Do you think David Eden keeps him here as a spy on us?"

This was too much for even Connor's suspicious mind, and he chuckled.

"They all want to hang around and have a look at you--that's the point,"
he answered. "Speak to him and you'll see him come running."

It needed not even speech; she smiled and nodded at Zacharias, and he
came to her at once with a grin of pleasure wrinkling his ancient face.
She invited him to sit down.

"I never see you resting," she said.

"David dislikes an idler," said Zacharias, who acknowledged her
invitation by dropping his withered hands on the back of the chair, but
made no move to sit down.

"But after all these years you have worked for him, I should think he
would give you a little house of your