The Girl looked her disappointment when she said: 

“I’m awfully sorry you’ve got to go.  I was goin’ to say—­” She stopped, and began to roll the keg back to its place.  Now she took the lantern from the bar and placed it on the keg; then turning to him once more she went on in a voice that was distinctly persuasive:  “If you didn’t have to go so soon, I would like to have you come up to the cabin to-night an’ we would talk o’ reachin’ out up there.  You see, the boys will be back here—­we close The Polka at one—­any time after . . .”

Hesitatingly, helplessly, Johnson stared at the Girl before him.  His acceptance, he realised only too well, meant a pleasant hour or two for him, of which there were only too few in the mad career that he was following, and he wanted to take advantage of it; on the other hand, his better judgment told him that already he should be on his way.

“Why, I—­I should ride on now.”  He began and then stopped, the next moment, however, he threw down his hat on the table in resignation and announced:  “I’ll come.”

“Oh, good!” cried the Girl, making no attempt to conceal her delight.  “You can use this,” she went on, handing him the lantern.  “It’s the straight trail up; you can’t miss it.  But I say, don’t expect too much o’ me—­I’ve only had thirty-two dollars’ worth o’ education.”  Despite her struggle to control herself, her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears.  “P’r’aps if I’d had more,” she kept on, regretfully, “why, you can’t tell what I might have been.  Say, that’s a terrible tho’t, ain’t it?  What we might a been—­an’ I know it when I look at you.”

Johnson was deeply touched at the Girl’s distress, and his voice broke, too, as he said: 

“Yes, what we might have been is a terrible thought, and I know it, Girl, when I look at you—­when I look at you.”

“You bet!” ejaculated the Girl.  And then to Johnson’s consternation she broke down completely, burying her face in her hands and sobbing out:  “Oh, ‘tain’t no use, I’m rotten, I’m ignorant, I don’t know nothin’ an’ I never knowed it ‘till to-night!  The boys always tol’ me I knowed so much, but they’re such damn liars!”

In an instant Johnson was beside her, patting her hand caressingly; she felt the sympathy in his touch and was quick to respond to it.

“Don’t you care, Girl, you’re all right,” he told her, choking back with difficulty the tears in his own voice.  “Your heart’s all right, that’s the main thing.  And as for your looks?  Well, to me you’ve got the face of an angel—­the face—­” He broke off abruptly and ended with:  “Oh, but I must be going now!”

A moment more and he stood framed in the doorway, his saddle in one hand and the Girl’s lantern in the other, torn by two emotions which grappled with each other in his bosom.  “Johnson, what the devil’s the matter with you?” he muttered half-aloud; then suddenly pulling himself together he stumbled rather than walked out of The Polka into the night.