"
He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists.
Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under
her breath:
"Do ye think the likes of ye
Could learn to like the likes o' me?
Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!"
A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly:
"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm
going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both
of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing
her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and
her half-childish lips.
And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this
time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive,
against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second
everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and
the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders.
In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled
out of the box and down the corridor.
At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had
gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being
borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume.
Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a
sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair.
With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one
of the woman's limp hands.
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