Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity.  “Never!” she cried.  “You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this.  I bid you go.  Begone!”

“Vooman, you mad meh!” cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his hands first extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properly tumbled, his eyes correctly rolling.  “I vill not be teniet!  Your puty, it is too much!  Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret?  Py Heaven, I—­”

With a swift motion he grasped her wrists.  Color rose to the Donatelli cheek.  Her eyes flashed.  She was about to sing.  She checked herself in time.  “Unhand me, sir!” she cried.

The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined.  And now the log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to light for them this unusual stage.  They did not hear the door open behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack servant been directed thither.

The door did open.  In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced.  He was dressed in his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but which did not disguise him nor the region which was his home.  His boots were new, sharp at toe and heel.  His hat, now removed, was new, but wide and white.  His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat, neither did white collar confine his neck.

A quick glance took in the scene before him.  A little dark man was contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty that he had ever seen or dreamed.  Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into the room.  There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice that brought an instant conviction.  This—­this was the Voice that he had worshipped!  This was that divine being whom he had heard and seen in so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nights afar in the desert lands.  She was assailed.  She was beset.  There swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life in that comer of the world.  In a flash his weapon leaped from its scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.

“Git back, you feller’” cried Tom Osby.  “Leggo!  What are you doin’ there?  Break, now, and git out.  This ain’t right.”

And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the latter sprang back and away into an immediate oblivion.  Tom Osby from that instant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman’s presence.  Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing for warlike action rather than that now grown needful.

Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of wide-eyed astonishment.  She had read in certain journals wild stories of doings of wild men.  Was that sort of thing actually true?