Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm was brewing and they ought to go home.
"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, anyhow. Let's make a night of it!"
At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself with Mac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage.
"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away from me all evening."
"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands.
"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you know I'm crazy about you?"
"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie."
"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It was all up with me the first time I saw you."
With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks at her, that she threw back her head and laughed.
"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him.
"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?"
"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me."
"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when you didn't want me to. In the factory yard--behind the gas-pipe--"
"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?"
"Yes! But there was another time even before that."
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.