“Oh, I can’t, Jim, I can’t.”
“You’ve got to, it’s too late to back out now.”
“I won’t, I tell you, not for anybody.”
The next instant the nude figure of the girl was catapulted out upon the platform—a figure which dropped to its knees and then tumbled over on its face and lay there in a quivering heap sobbing violently.
A tall man with snow-white mustache rose slowly from his seat in the second row. He turned around to face the rest, and then said, as calmly as if he were in his own house:
“Gentlemen, I protest; this must not go on. It is disgraceful.”
He picked up his hat and coat and started for the door.
In five minutes the room was empty. The girl had been pulled back of the scenes by a cursing manager, but she might as well have been dumb for all she heard.
“You’re a mutt,” he was saying; “here you’ve had your chance and quit, and you’ve made a sucker out of me, too. I can’t look any of those people in the face again.”
Of course, he didn’t consider where she figured.