His back was to Donnegan, and consequently the girl, facing him, could look straight across the room at the red-headed man.  She allowed herself one brief glance, and she saw that he was sitting with his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, looking fixedly at her.  It was the gaze of one who forgets all else and wraps himself in a dream.  Other people in the room were noting that changeless stare and the whisper buzzed more and more loudly, but Donnegan had forgotten the rest of the world, it seemed.  It was a very cunning piece of acting, not too much overdone, and once more the heart of Nelly Lebrun fluttered.

She remembered that in spite of his frankness he had not talked with insolent presumption to her.  He had merely answered her individual questions with an astonishing, childlike frankness.  He had laid his heart before her, it seemed.  And now he sat at a distance looking at her with the white, intense face of one who sees a dream.

Nelly Lebrun was recalled by the heavy breathing of Jack Landis and she discovered that she had allowed her eyes to rest too long on the red-headed stranger.  She had forgotten; her eyes had widened; and even Jack Landis was able to look into her mind and see things that startled him.  For the first time he sensed that this was more than a careless flirtation.  And he sat stiffly at the table, looking at her and through her with a fixed smile.  Nelly, horrified, strove to cover her tracks.

“You’re right, Jack,” she said.  “I—­I think there was something brazen in the way he tagged you.  And—­let’s go home together!”

Too late.  The mind of Landis was not oversharp, but now jealousy gave it a point.  He nodded his assent, and they got up, but there was no increase in his color.  She read as plain as day in his face that he intended murder this night and Nelly was truly frightened.

So she tried different tactics.  All the way to the substantial little house which Lebrun had built at a little distance from the gambling hall, she kept up a running fire of steady conversation.  But when she said good night to him, his face was still set.  She had not deceived him.  When he turned, she saw him go back into the night with long strides, and within half an hour she knew, as clearly as if she were remembering the picture instead of foreseeing it, that Jack and Donnegan would face each other gun in hand on the floor of Milligan’s dance hall.

Still, she was not foolish enough to run after Jack, take his arm, and make a direct appeal.  It would be too much like begging for Donnegan, and even if Jack forgave her for this interest in his rival, she had sense enough to feel that Donnegan himself never would.  Something, however, must be done to prevent the fight, and she took the straightest course.