For an instant Alan stared at her, dazed, unable to grasp the force of what she was saying, the significance of her tone.  As a matter of fact the artist in him had leaped to the surface, banished all other considerations.  He had never seen Tony Holiday really angry before.  She was magnificent with those flashing eyes and scarlet cheeks—­a glorious little Fury—­a Valkyrie.  He would paint her like that.  She was stupendous, the most vividly alive thing he had ever seen, like flame itself, in her flaming anger.  Then it came over him what she had said.

“But, Tony,” he pleaded, “my belovedest—­”

He put out both hands in supplication, but Tony whirled away from them.  She snatched the great bunch of red roses from the table, ran to the window, flung up the sash, hurled them out into the night.  Then she turned back to Alan.

“Now go,” she commanded, pointing with a small, inexorable hand to the door.

Alan Massey went.

Tony dropped in a chair, spent and trembling, all but in tears.  The disagreeable scene, the piled up complex of emotions coming on top of the stress and strain of the play were almost too much for her.  She was a quivering bundle of nerves and misery at the moment.

Dick came to her.

“Forgive me, Tony.  I shouldn’t have forced the issue maybe.  But I couldn’t stand any more from that cad.”

“I am glad you did exactly what you did do, Dick, and I am more grateful than I can ever tell you for not letting Alan get you into a fight here in this place with all these people coming and going.  I would never have gotten over it if anything like that had happened.  It would have been terrible.  I couldn’t ever have looked any of them in the face again.”  She shivered and put her two hands over her eyes ashamed to the quick at the thought.

Dick sat down on the arm of her chair, one hand resting gently on the girl’s shoulder.

“Don’t cry, Tony,” he begged.  “I can’t stand it.  You needn’t have worried.  There wasn’t any danger of anything like that happening.  I care too much to let you in for anything of that sort.  So does he for that matter.  He saw it in a minute.  He really wouldn’t want to do you any harm anyway, Tony.  Even I know that, and you must know it better than I.”

Tony put down her hands, looked at Dick.  “I suppose that is true,” she sighed.  “He does love me, Dick.”

“He does, Tony.  I wish he didn’t.  And I wish with all my heart I were sure you didn’t love him.”

Tony sighed again and her eyes fell.

“I wish—­I were sure, too,” she faltered.

Dick winced at that.  He had no answer.  What was there to say?

“I don’t see why I should care.  I don’t see how I can care after to-night.  He is horrid in lots of ways—­a cad—­just as you called him.  I know Larry would feel just as you do and hate to have him come near me.  Larry and I have almost quarreled about it now.  He thinks Uncle Phil is all wrong not to forbid my seeing Alan at all.  But Uncle Phil is too wise.  He doesn’t want to have me marry Alan any more than the rest of you do but he knows if he fights it it would put me on the other side in a minute and I’d do it, maybe, in spite of everybody.”