In the end her decision was based, not upon Roxie, but upon herself and the man she loved. To be true to that love, she must send him; to be true to that love, he must go. If this new-found passion meant anything, it meant being true to the highest; it meant willingness to sacrifice to the highest. If she quailed before such a clean-cut issue as this, she could never again respect that love; if she saved him at such a cost, she could never respect that which she had saved. With head up, if with knees weak, she knocked at his door. And as she did so it was as though not her hand but her naked heart were beating against the wooden panels. The ache of it made her tremble. To add to the agony she was forced to do it again--and yet again. The silence following hurt, too. It raised new fears. These accumulated so rapidly that she was soon in a panic. Scarcely conscious of what she was about, she turned the knob and pushed open his door--standing back as she did so. Light is indifferent. It cares not what it reveals. It showed now with grim starkness Allston’s empty, untouched bed. And a vacant room. CHAPTER XXIII The fact that Allston had gone last night and had not yet returned was as convincing proof to Wilmer of some mishap to him as a direct message would have been. Had he accomplished his purpose, he would have been back within three hours--four at the most. Such undertakings are decided quickly. When two strong men meet in mountain country over such an issue, the argument is not long-drawn-out. And the end is apt to be definite. So for a moment the girl stared at the empty bed as one stares helplessly at the jerky telegrams on yellow paper that are brutally thrust into one’s life. Direct blows between the eyes these, which stun. And however grimly concrete the news, it is difficult to understand because it comes through such a thin medium. All is well--then a bit of yellow paper--and all is over. Wilmer did not have even as much as a written report; just an opened door and silence. But if the message had been written in burning letters of fire or shouted at her through a megaphone, it could have told her no more. He had gone to meet Bud Childers and he had not come back.