“She can have me any minute, on the stage or off,” answered Micky promptly.  “She’s a winner.  Got me going all right.  Most forgot my lines she was so darned pretty.”

Dick took advantage of the confusion of the interruption to get in his word.

“Will you come out with me for a bite somewhere, Tony.  I won’t keep you late, but there are some things I want to talk over with you.”

Tony hesitated.  She had caught the ominous flash of Alan’s eyes.  She was desperately afraid there would be a scene if she said yes to Dick now in Alan’s hearing.  The latter strode over to her instantly, and laid his hand with a proprietorial air on her arm.  From this point of vantage he faced Dick insolently.

“Miss Holiday is going out with me,” he asserted.  “You—­clear out.”

The tone and manner even more than the words were deliberate insult.  Dick’s face went white.  His mouth set tight.  There was almost as ugly a look in his eyes as there was in Alan’s.  Tony had never seen him look like that and was frightened.

“I’ll clear out when Miss Holiday asks me to and not before,” he said in a significantly quiet voice.  “Don’t go too far, Mr. Massey.  I have taken a good deal from you.  There’s a limit.  Tony, I repeat my question.  Will you go out with me to-night?”

Before Tony could speak Alan Massey’s long right arm shot out in Dick’s direction.  Dick dodged the blow coolly.

“Hold on, Massey,” he said.  “I’m perfectly willing to smash your head any time it is convenient.  Nothing would afford me greater pleasure in fact.  But you will kindly keep from making trouble here.  You can’t get a woman’s name mixed up with a cheap brawl such as you are trying to start.  You know, it won’t do.”

Alan Massey’s white face turned a shade whiter.  His arm fell.  He turned back to Tony, real anguish in his fire-shot eyes.

“I beg your pardon, Tony dearest,” he bent over to say.  “Carson is right.  We’ll fight it out elsewhere when you are not present.  May I take you to the taxi?  I have one waiting outside.”

Another group of people passed through the vestibule, said goodnight and went on out to the street exit.  It made Tony sick to think of what they would have seen if Dick had lost his self control as Alan had.  She thought she had never liked Dick as she did that moment, never despised Alan Massey so utterly.  Dick was a man.  Alan was a spoiled child, a weakling, the slave of his passions.  It was no thanks to him that her name was not already bandied about on people’s lips, the name of a girl, about whom men came to fist blows like a Bowery movie scene.  She was humiliated all over, enraged with Alan, enraged with herself for stooping to care for a man like that.  She waited until they were absolutely alone again and then said what she had to say.  She turned to face Alan directly.

“You may take me nowhere,” she said.  “I don’t want to see you again as long as I live.”