Yet he rose from his table, reached the floor with a few steps, and touched Landis lightly on the shoulder.  The challenge was passed.  Landis stopped abruptly and turned his head; his face showed merely dull astonishment.  The current of dancers split and washed past on either side of the motionless trio, and on every face there was a glittering curiosity.  What would Landis do?

Nothing.  He was too stupefied to act.  He, Jack Landis, had actually been tagged while he was dancing with the woman which all The Corner knew to be his girl!  And before his befogged senses cleared the girl was in the arms of the red-haired man and was lost in the crowd.

What a buzz went around the room!  For a moment Landis could no more move than he could think; then he sent a sullen glance toward the girl and retreated to their table.  A childish sullenness clouded his face while he sat there; only one decision came clearly to him:  he must kill Donnegan!

In the meantime people noted two things.  The first was that Donnegan danced very well with Nelly Lebrun; and his red hair beside the silken black of the girl’s was a startling contrast.  It was not a common red.  It flamed, as though with phosphoric properties of its own.  But they danced well; and the eyes of both of them were gleaming.  Another thing:  men did not tag Donnegan any more than they had offered to tag Landis.  One or two slipped out from the outskirts of the floor, but something in the face of Donnegan discouraged them and made them turn elsewhere as though they had never started for Nelly Lebrun in the first place.  Indeed, to a two-year-old child it would have been apparent that Nelly and the red-headed chap were interested in each other.

As a matter of fact they did not speak a single syllable until they had gone around the floor one complete turn and the dance was coming toward an end.

It was he who spoke first, gloomily:  “I shouldn’t have done it; I shouldn’t have tagged him!”

At this she drew back a little so that she could meet his eyes.

“Why not?”

“The whole crew will be on my trail.”

“What crew?”

“Beginning with Lord Nick!”

This shook her completely out of the thrall of the dance.

“Lord Nick?  What makes you think that?”

“I know he’s thick with Landis.  It’ll mean trouble.”

He was so simple about it that she began to laugh.  It was not such a voice as Lou Macon’s.  It was high and light, and one could suspect that it might become shrill under a stress.

“And yet it looks as though you’ve been hunting trouble,” she said.

“I couldn’t help it,” said Donnegan naively.

It was a very subtle flattery, this frankness from a man who had puzzled all The Corner.  Nelly Lebrun felt that she was about to look behind the scenes and she tingled with delight.

“Tell me,” she said.  “Why not?”