"Quitting! You don't mean that!"
"It looks like it, ma'am. I didn't know just how to take what he said. It seems like somethin' 's got him worried. He wasn't like himself. You wouldn't know him.
"He said that future plans for this outfit didn't interest him. He said he was leavin' and it wasn't likely he'd be back but it wasn't so much what he said as it was th' way he said it that made me think he was goin' to drift. We all know he's got some pretty active enemies but it wasn't like Beck to run away from 'em. Still....
"He left me in charge an' said I was to take orders from you. He ain't showed up since and Lord knows where he'd go except out of the country."
Out of the country! The words made her hear but vaguely the story of the ruined Tank and the questions about the work that Oliver put to her. Out of the country! He had gone, then, thinking that her love had not been a fast love, that she was wholly unworthy. He had taken his chance and had lost and that loss had taken from him even the desire to stay and face the men who would drive him out of the country because he had defended her!
Later Jane found herself riding homeward, the sorrel at a walk, her mind numb and heavy. Last night it had been a question of love against her pride; she had sacrificed the latter only to find that that sacrifice had been made too late.
She wanted, suddenly, to quit ... to quit trying ... thinking....
She canvased the situation: she was alone, without an understanding individual upon whom to lean. She was the target for great forces of evil which sought to undermine her very determination to exist in that country. A faint wave of resentment made itself felt at that. They would continue their war and upon a lone woman! She realized her position more keenly than she had before, when Beck had been shielding her. Now she stood unprotected. If she were to exist she must stand alone!
Her mind went back to that time when Dick Hilton had told her that she could not stand alone and her resentment became a degree more pronounced.
The lethargy, the hopelessness clung but behind it was something else, a realization that she had not lost utterly. She had lost the love she had found, but had she failed to gain anything? Yesterday it seemed that the ripest fruits of experience were hers; she had position—menaced, but still hers—she had love. Months before she had abandoned the quest of love, seeking only to stand alone. She might go back to her outlook of those days, put aside the call of her heart and seek only for place; she could make that search intelligently now!