He could do something for others.

Who?
If that mattered, there, for instance, was poor old Mrs.Cass, aged and lame now; there was Al Auchincloss, dying in his boots, afraid of enemies, and wistful for his blood and his property to receive the fruit of his labors; there were the two girls, Helen and Bo, new and strange to the West, about to be confronted by a big problem of ranch life and rival interests.

Dale thought of still more people in the little village of Pine--of others who had failed, whose lives were hard, who could have been made happier by kindness and assistance.
What, then, was the duty of Milt Dale to himself?
Because men preyed on one another and on the weak, should he turn his back upon a so-called civilization or should he grow like them?
Clear as a bell came the answer that his duty was to do neither.

And then he saw how the little village of Pine, as well as the whole world, needed men like him.

He had gone to nature, to the forest, to the wilderness for his development; and all the judgments and efforts of his future would be a result of that education.
Thus Dale, lying in the darkness and silence of his lonely park, arrived at a conclusion that he divined was but the beginning of a struggle.
It took long introspection to determine the exact nature of that struggle, but at length it evolved into the paradox that Helen Rayner had opened his eyes to his duty as a man, that he accepted it, yet found a strange obstacle in the perplexing, tumultuous, sweet fear of ever going near her again.
Suddenly, then, all his thought revolved around the girl, and, thrown off his balance, he weltered in a wilderness of unfamiliar strange ideas.
When he awoke next day the fight was on in earnest.