The lights on the stage were suddenly turned up. A hard-featured man came forward and grasped the child by the arm.
"What's all this row?" he cried; "I'm the manager of Mademoiselle Hélène. Her mother left the child with me. She gets good food and clothes and is well taken care of. What more does she want?"
"I want my papa! Oh, I want you!" cried the little girl.
"And you shall have me, dear."
"No," said the man on the stage, roughly, "she shall not!"
"Gentlemen," cried the other man, turning about and facing the audience. "Friends, there is my little daughter. Her mother ran away from me, left me. I haven't seen Nellie for two years. I just happened in here to-night and recognized her, and——"
"Give him his daughter," broke out a burly man in the third row of the parquet, rising in his seat as he spoke and shaking his fist at the man on the stage, "or——"
The house was in a perfect uproar now. The women in tears, the men screaming with flushed, excited faces.
"Let him have her!"
"Give her up!"