He felt it shake over his knee.

He was trembling all over.
The astounding discovery that he did not want to kill Ellen's father--that he could not do it--awakened Jean to the despairing nature of his love for her.

In this grim moment of indecision, when he knew his Indian subtlety and ability gave him a great advantage over the Jorths, he fully realized his strange, hopeless, and irresistible love for the girl.

He made no attempt to deny it any longer.

Like the night and the lonely wilderness around him, like the inevitableness of this Jorth-Isbel feud, this love of his was a thing, a fact, a reality.
He breathed to his own inward ear, to his soul--he could not kill Ellen Jorth's father.