The room was empty. His eyes glanced down at the book which she had torn from his hand and flung away. He saw that it had fallen, sprawled and awkward, and was leaning drunkenly against the legs of the dictionary stand. Across from it, by a deep leather chair, lay, also on the floor, a dainty handkerchief, moist and pressed into a little ball. Each of these held him with an esoteric charm; but his eyes remained upon the tear-moistened, scented linen as though at any moment it might begin to accuse him. He was afraid to touch it, and afraid to touch the book. He felt that he had obtruded an unwelcome presence upon these two mute evidences of passion which seemed now to be drawn momentarily apart for breath before re-engaging in the fray. In this strained expectancy the measured ticking of the old clock in the corner was startlingly loud. One might have counted a hundred, and then, as quietly as he came, he tiptoed out, crossed the porch and passed on through the trees. CHAPTER XXXI OUT OF THE DYING DAY When the sheriff turned away, Jane had for an instant closed her eyes in a prayer of happy thankfulness; but then a torture, a tearing and racking mortification because she had proved herself so weak before the mountain man so strong--and in contrast to Brent! (ah, God, what sacrifice would he not make for her!)--thrust its claws into her sensitive nature, and she blindly fled to the long room whose musty silence promised solitude. At the far end of this she threw herself straight out upon a sofa, and for more than an hour buried her face in its linen coverlet. Her brows were drawn into a frown as she wilfully shut out the image of Brent, for something sterner must first be faced. Something must be done to re-establish Dale's faith in her, or she must forever abandon him to other hands and other influences. Today--now--she must act. And this left her helpless, because she could find no way. His nature had made a complete revolution in that moment of crisis before the sheriff came; his words had carried her beyond her understanding of him! She did not know this new Dale, and how could she re-establish faith with a stranger? But at any hazard it must be tried. Were she to fail him, he would be like a compass with no magnetic pole--spinning, vacillating. Suppose he should go spinning off from his now safe orbit? And then suppose he should come rushing back to her for help?--could she ever again enter those former halls of confidence with this new, strange man, as he had grown to be? This was the price, she told herself, of having been weaker than he; of having behaved more ignobly! The contemplation of it sapped her self-assurance, and as self-assurance vanished there began to enter a new feeling which she unwillingly recognized as fear.