e said to David.

The master of the Garden turned a glance of impatience and suspicion
upon the gambler, but Connor carefully made his face a blank. He
continued to drum idly on the edge of the table, and the idle drumming
was spelling to the girl's quick ear: "Out!"

"You cannot stay?" murmured David.

She drank in his stunned expression. It was like music to her.

"Would you," she said, "be happy away from the Garden, and the horses
and your servants? No more am I happy away from my home."

"You are not happy with us?" muttered David. "You are not happy?"

"Could you be away from the Garden?"

"But that is different. The Garden was made by four wise men."

"By five wise men," said the girl. "For you are the fifth."

He was so blind that he did not perceive the irony.

"And therefore," he said, "the Garden is all that the heart should
desire. John and Matthew and Luke and Paul made it to fill that
purpose."

"But how do you know they succeeded? You have not seen the world beyond
the mountains."

"It is full of deceit, hard hearts, cruelty, and cunning."

"It is full of my dear friends, David!"

She thought of the colt and the mare and Elijah; and it became suddenly
easy to lure and deceive this implacable judge of others. She touched
the arm of the master lightly with her finger tips and smiled.

"Come with me, and see my world!"

"The law which the four made for me--I must not leave!"

"Was it wrong to let me enter?"

"You have made me happy," he argued slowly. "You have made me happier
than I was before. And surely I could not have been made happy by that
which is wrong. No, it was right to bring you into the valley. The
moment I looked at you I knew that it was right."

"Then, will it be wrong to go out with me? You need not stay! But see
what lies beyond the mountains before you judge it!"

He shook his head.

"Are you afraid? It will not harm you."

He flushed at that. And then began to walk up and down across the patio.
She saw Connor white with anxiety, but about Connor and his affairs she
had little concern at this moment. She felt only a cruel pleasure in her
control over this man, half savage and half child. Now he stopped
abruptly before her.

"If the world, after I see it, still displeases me, when I return, will
you come with me, Ruth? Will you come back to the Garden of Eden?"

In the distance Ben Connor was gesturing desperately to make her say
yes. But she could not resist