Johnson cleared his throat as if to speak but said nothing; whereupon the Girl continued: 

“You say you believe in Fate.  Well, Fate has caught up with you—­you got to stay here.”

Johnson was strangely silent.  He was wondering how his coming there to-night had really come about.  But he could find no solution to the problem unless it was in response to that perverse instinct which prompts us all at times to do the very thing which in our hearts we know to be wrong.  The Girl, meanwhile, after a final creasing of the neatly-folded cover, started for the cupboard, stopping on the way to pick up various articles which the wind had strewn about the room.  Flinging them quickly into the cupboard she now went over to the window and once more attempted to peer out into the night.  But as before, it was of no avail.  With a shrug she straightened the curtains at the windows and started for the door.  Her action seemed to quicken his decision, for, presently, with a gesture of resignation, he threw down his hat and coat on the table and said as if speaking to himself: 

“Well, it is Fate—­my Fate that has always made the thing I shouldn’t do so easy.”  And then, turning to the Girl, he added:  “Come, Girl, as you say, if I can’t go, I can’t.  But I know as I stand here that I’ll never give you up.”

The Girl looked puzzled.

“Why, what do you mean?”

“I mean,” began Johnson, pacing the floor slowly.  Now he stopped by a chair and pointed as though to the falling snow.  “Suppose we say that’s an omen—­that the old trail is blotted out and there is a fresh road.  Would you take it with me a stranger, who says:  From this day I mean to be all you’d have me.  Would you take it with me far away from here and forever?”

It did not take the Girl long to frame an answer.  Taking Johnson’s hand she said with great feeling: 

“Well, show me the girl that would want to go to Heaven alone!  I’ll sell out the saloon—­I’ll go anywhere with you, you bet!”

Johnson bent low over her hand and kissed it.  The Girl’s straightforward answer had filled his heart to overflowing with joy.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” a moment later he asked.

Sudden joy leapt to her blue eyes.

“Oh, yes,” she told him with a world of understanding in her voice.  There was a silence; then she went on reminiscently:  “There’s a little Spanish Mission church—­I pass it ‘most every day.  I can look in an’ see the light burnin’ before the Virgin an’ see the saints standin’ round with glassy eyes an’ faded satin slippers.  An’ I often tho’t what they’d think if I was to walk right in to be made—­well, some man’s wife.  It makes your blood like pin-points thinkin’ about it.  There’s somethin’ kind o’ holy about love, ain’t they?”

Johnson nodded.  He had never regarded love in that light before, much less known it.  For many moments he stood motionless, a new problem of right and wrong throbbing in his bosom.