"Why, Belle darling! That sounds more like me than you." "Jim, as I lay awake last night, a voice seemed to be sounding in my heart: 'Don't let him go. If he goes, you'll lose him, you'll lose each other.' Jim, do you suppose God brought you and me together in this way, to be so much to each other, to be exactly fitted to round out each other's life, to let us separate now?" "Belle, I believe He sent me out here to meet you, and any one coming between us is going against God." "I know, Jim. And yet I have the feeling, which I can't shake off, that as sure as you go back to college, I shall lose you." "Then, by Heaven! I won't go; and that settles it, Belle. I'll chuck the whole thing." And his forehead flushed with passion. She dropped her face on her knees and shook in a paroxysm of weeping. All the emotional side of her nature--so carefully repressed throughout these weeks and months of struggle--swept away their barriers. Now that she had spoken the fear that was in her heart, the reality of the danger that threatened their happiness crushed her down. Jim threw his arm around her. "Belle, Belle, I can't see you cry that way. Belle, don't! We are not going to part." It was long before she found her voice. In broken sounds she sobbed: "I can't give you up now," and she leaned toward him though still she hid her face. "Belle, why do you talk of such a thing? You won't give me up, because I won't let you. I won't go, Belle, that's settled." Her only answer was to cling to him passionately. After a long silence, during which the ponies dropped to a walk, she said half questioningly: "Jim, we can't--give up all and--and--separate now." "Belle darling," and Jim suddenly became calm and clear in thought, and a strange new sense of power came on him as he gripped himself, "there are times when a man must just take the bit in his teeth and break through everything, and I'm going to do that now. There's just one way out of this; we're half-way to Deadwood. Let's go right on and get married. The college and everything else can go to the divil so long as I can be with you. "Will you agree to that?" he asked, lifting her head from his shoulder and looking into her eyes. "Jim," she said, pushing him gently away from her and leaning back so that they occupied the sides of the wide seat, "let's be fair with each other. For a long time you've had your fling at the hardship of going back to Coulter while I have urged you to go. This is my fling at it"--she smiled at him through her tears--"my rebellion, so perhaps we're quits. But the problem still remains. I thought about it all last night and I decided I could not let you go--that it meant the end of our hopes. When you first asked me, up the road, I doubted my right to tell you the fears I had. But, oh, Jim, it is _our_ happiness, _ours_, not yours or mine alone. If we have that we can _make_ the rest come right. If we lose that----"