David watched them go, and while his back was turned a fierce, soft dialogue pa.s.sed between Ruth Manning and Ben Connor.
"Are you a man?" she asked him, through her set teeth. "Are you going to let that beautiful little thing die?"
"I"d rather see the cold-hearted fool die in place of Timeh. But what can we do? Nothing. Just smile in his face."
"I hate him!" she exclaimed.
"If you hate him, then use him. Will you?"
"If I can make him follow me, tease him to come, make him think I love him, I"ll do it. I"d do anything to torture him."
"I told you he was a savage."
"You were right, Ben. A fiend--not a man! Oh, thank Heavens that I see through him."
Anger gave her color and banished her tears. And when David turned he found what seemed a picture of pleasure. It was infinitely grateful to him. If he had searched and studied for the words he could not have found anything to embitter her more than his first speech.
"And what do you think of the justice of David?" he asked, coming to them.
She could not speak; luckily Connor stepped in and filled the gap of awkward silence.
"A very fine thing to have done, Brother David," he said. "Do you know what I thought of when I heard you talk?"
"Of what?" said David, composing his face to receive the compliment. At that Ruth turned suddenly away, for she dared not trust her eyes, and the hatred which burned in them.
"I thought of the old story of Abraham and Isaac. You were offering up something as dear to you as a child, almost, to the law of the Garden of Eden."
"It is true," said David complacently. "But when the flesh is diseased it must be burned away."
He called to Ruth: "And you, Ruth?"
This childish seeking after compliments made her smile, and naturally he misjudged the smile.
"I think with Benjamin," she said softly.
"Yet my ways in the Garden must seem strange to you," went on David, expanding in the warmth of his own sense of virtue. "But you will grow accustomed to them, I know."
The opening was patent. She was beginning to nod her acquiescence when Connor, in alarm, tapped on the table, once and again in swift telegraphy: "No! No!"
The faint smile went out on her face.
"No," she 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 a pause--a pause in which torment showed on the face of David. And then, deliberately, she made her eyes soften--made her lips smile.
"Yes, David, I will come back!"
He leaned a little toward her, then straightened with a shudder and crossed the patio to the Room of Silence. Behind that door he disappeared, and left Connor and the girl alone. The gambler threw down his arms as if abandoning a burden.
"Why in the name of G.o.d did you let him leave you?" he groaned. "Why?
Why? Why?"