boom of the sea might have lessened her sense of utter loneliness.

And that silence fitted the darkness, and both were apostles of
dread. They spoke to her. She breathed dread on that silent air and
it filled her breast. There was nothing stable in the night shadows.
The ravine seemed to send forth stealthy, noiseless shapes, specter
and human, man and phantom, each on the other's trail.

If Jim would only come and let her see that he was safe for the
hour! A hundred times she imagined she saw him looming darker than
the shadows. She had only to see him now, to feel his hand, and
dread might be lost. Love was something beyond the grasp of mind.
Love had confounded Jim Cleve; it had brought up kindness and honor
from the black depths of a bandit's heart; it had transformed her
from a girl into a woman. Surely with all its greatness it could not
be lost; surely in the end it must triumph over evil.

Joan found that hope was fluctuating, but eternal. It took no stock
of intelligence. It was a matter of feeling. And when she gave rein
to it for a moment, suddenly it plunged her into sadness. To hope
was to think! Poor Jim! It was his fool's paradise. Just to let her
be his wife! That was the apex of his dream. Joan divined that he
might yield to her wisdom, he might become a man, but his agony
would be greater. Still, he had been so intense, so strange, so
different that she could not but feel joy in his joy.

Then at a soft footfall, a rustle, and a moving shadow Joan's
mingled emotions merged into a poignant sense of the pain and
suspense and tenderness of the actual moment.