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."