At the house they were met by one of the servants who had been waiting for David to receive from the master definite orders concerning some woodchopping. For the trees of the garden were like children to David of Eden, and he allowed only the ones he himself designated to be cut for timber or fuel. He left the girl with manifest reluctance¹.  
"For when I leave you of what do you think, and what do you do? I am like the blind."
 
She felt this speech was peculiar² in character. Who but David of Eden could have been jealous of the very thoughts of another? And smiling at this, she went into the patio³ where Ben Connor was still lounging. Few things had ever been more gratifying to the gambler than the sight of the girl's complacent⁴ smile, for he knew that she was judging David.
 
"What happened?" he asked.
 
"Nothing worth repeating. But I think you're wrong, Ben. He isn't a barbarian⁵. He's just a child."
 
"That's another word for the same thing. Ever see anything more brutal⁶ than a child? The wildest savage⁷ that ever stepped is a saint compared with a ten-year-old boy."
 
"Perhaps. He acts like ten years. When I mention leaving the valley he flies into a tantrum; he has taken me so much for granted that he has even picked out the site for my house."
 
"As if you'd ever stay in a place like this!"
 
He covered his touch of anxiety with loud laughter.
 
"I don't know," she was saying thoughtfully a moment later. "I like it—a lot."
 
"Anything seems pretty good after Lukin. But when your auto⁸ is buzzing down Broadway—"
 
She interrupted him with a quick little laugh of excitement.
 
"But do you really think I can make him leave the valley?"
 
"Of course I'm sure."
 
"He says there's a law against it."
 
"I tell you, Ruth, you're his law now; not whatever piffle is in that Room of Silence."
 
She looked earnestly at the closed door. Her silence had always bothered the gambler, and this one particularly annoyed him.
 
"Let's hear your thoughts?" he asked uneasily.
 
"It's just an idea of mine that inside that room we can find out everything we want to know about David Eden."
 
"What do we want to know?" growled⁹ Connor. "I know everything that's necessary. He's a nut with a gang of the best horses that ever stepped. I'm talking horse, not David Eden. If I have to make the fool rich, it isn't because I want to."
 
She returned no direct answer, but after a moment: "I wish I knew."
 
"What?"
 
She became profoundly serious.
 
"The point is this: he may be something more than a boy or a savage. And if he is something more, he's the finest man I've ever laid eyes on. That's why I want to get inside that room. That's why I want to learn the secret—if there is a secret—the things he believes in, how he happens to be what he is and how—"
 
Connor had endured her rising warmth of expression as long as he could. Now he exploded.
 
"You do me one favor," he cried excitedly, more moved than she had ever seen him before. "Let me do your thinking for you when it comes to other men. You take my word about this David Eden. Bah! When I have you fixed¹⁰ up in little old Manhattan you'll forget about him and his mystery inside a week. Will you lay off on the thinking?"
 
She nodded absently. In reality she was struck by the first similarity she had ever noticed between David of Eden and Connor the gambler: within ten minutes they had both expressed remarkable¹¹ concern as to what might be her innermost thoughts. She began to feel that Connor himself might have elements of the boy in his make up—the cruel boy which he protested was in David Eden.
 
She had many reasons for liking¹² Connor. For one thing he had offered her an escape from her old imprisoned¹³ life. Again he had flattered her in the most insinuating¹⁴ manner by his complete trust. She knew that there was not one woman in ten thousand to whom he would have confided¹⁵ his great plan, and not one in a million whose ability to execute his scheme he would have trusted.
 
More than this, before her trip to the Garden he had given her a large sum of money for the purchase of the Indian's gelding; and Ruth Manning had 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 recoiled¹⁶ 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 stimulating¹⁷. 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 quotations¹⁸ ............