"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me."
"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when you didn't want me to. In the factory yard—behind the gas-pipe—"
"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?"
"Yes! But there was another time even before that."
He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists.
Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under her breath:
"Do ye think the likes of ye
Could learn to like the likes o' me?
Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!"
A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly:
"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and her half-childish lips.
And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders.