The last quiet began for David. He had heard the sounds of departure. He had heard the rumble¹ of the oxwains begin and go slowly toward the gate with never the sound of a human voice, and he pictured, with a grim satisfaction, the downcast faces and the frightened, guilty glances, as his servants fled, conscious that they were betraying their master. It filled him with a sort of sulky content which was more painful than sorrow. But before the sound of the wagons² died out the wind blew back from the gate of the Garden a thin, joyous³ chorus of singing voices. They were leaving him with songs!  
He was incredulous for a time. He felt, first, a great regret that he had let them go. Then, in an overwhelming wave of righteousness, he determined⁴ to dismiss them from his mind. They were gone; but worse still, the horses were gone, and the valley around him was empty! He remembered the dying prophecy of Abraham, now, as the stern Elijah had repeated it. He had let the world into the Garden, and the tide of the world's life, receding⁵, would take all the life of the Garden away beyond the mountains among other men.
 
The feeling that Connor had been right beset⁶ him: that the four first masters had been wrong, and that they had raised David in error. Yet his pride still upheld him.
 
That day he went resolutely⁷ about the routine. He was not hungry, but when the time came he went into the big kitchen and prepared food. It was a place of much noise. The great copper⁸ kettles chimed and murmured whenever he touched them, and they spoke⁹ to him of the servants who were gone. Half of his bitterness had already left him and he could remember those days in his childhood when Abraham had told him tales, and Zacharias had taught him how to ride at the price of many a tumble from the lofty back of the gentle old mare¹⁰. Yet he set the food on the table in the patio¹¹ and ate it with steady resolution. Then he returned to the big kitchen and cleansed¹² the dishes.
 
It was the late afternoon, now, the time when the sunlight becomes yellow and loses its heat, and the heavy blue shadow sloped across the patio. A quiet time. Now and again he found that he was tense with waiting for sounds in the wind of the servants returning for the night from the fields, and the shrill¹³ whinny of the colts coming back from the pastures to the paddocks. But he remembered what had happened and made himself relax.
 
There was a great dread¹⁴ before him. Finally he realized that it was the coming of the night, and he went into the Room of Silence for the last time to find consolation¹⁵. The book of Matthew had always been a means of bringing the consolation and counsel of the Voice, but when he opened the book he could only think of the girl, as she must have leaned above it. How had she read? With a smile of mockery or with tears? He closed the book; but still she was with him. It seemed that when he turned in the chair he must find her waiting behind him and he found himself growing tense with expectation, his heart beating rapidly.
 
Out of the Room of Silence he fled as if a curse lived in it, and without following any conscious direction, he went to the room of Ruth.
 
The fragrance¹⁶ had left the wild flowers, and the great golden blossoms at the window hung thin and limp, the bell lips hanging close together, the color faded to a dim yellow. The green things must be taken away before they molded. He raised his hand to tear down the transplanted vine, but his fingers fell away from it. To remove it was to destroy the last trace of her. She had seen these flowers; on account of them she had smiled at him with tears of happiness in her eyes. The skin of the mountain lion on the floor was still rumpled¹⁷ where her foot had fallen, and he could see the indistinct outline where the heel of her shoe had pressed.
 
He avoided that place when he stepped back, and turning, he saw her bed. The dappled deerskin lay

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