er to him, her
flexible spine bent and her head drooped backward, her face with its
flush all gone, gleaming white in the dusk. At this he rained kisses
on it, on her eyes, hair, cheeks, mouth, the burning softness of his
full lips seeming to leave a smear on her skin where they pressed it.
Still holding her with one arm, pressed to him as though the two young
bodies were gripped together by a vice, he loosened the other arm and
thrust it at the back of her dress, through the flimsy gauze of her
scarf, down next her body. His stiff cuff caught on the edge of her
dress, and his sleeve slid up--it was his bare arm against her naked
flesh. He gave a savage, smothered, gasping exclamation, pressed his
fingers deeply into her side, still kissing her passionately, her
neck, her shoulders, burying his hot face in her bosom.

It was the girl's body which acted, since at the first instant of the
whirlwind which had broken over her, her mind had been shocked into
a swooning paralysis. Only her strong, sound body, hardened by work,
fortified by outdoor exercise, was ready in its every fiber for this
moment. Her body bent suddenly like a spring of fine steel, its
strength momentarily more than a match for his, and thrust the man
from her with staggering violence. Her reaction from him was as
physical a sensation as though she had bitten into a tempting fruit
and found it not sweet--not even bitter--but nasty. She sickened at
the sight of him.

As he caught his balance, laughing a little but not at all
good-naturedly, and started back towards her with a dangerous dark
face of excited anger and desire, his headlong rush was checked an
instant by the fierce eyes which flamed at him from her crimson face.
Even her neck and shoulders were now scarlet. She held him off for the
space of a breath, giving one deep exclamation, "_Oh_!" short, sharply
exhaled, almost like a blow in his face.

But his blood was up as well as hers, and after his momentary pause,
he rushed forward again, his handsome, blond face black with passion.

Sylvia stooped, gathered up her skirts, turned, burst open the door,
and fled out of the room, running in her high-heeled satin slippers as
she did on the track in the Gymnasium, with long, deer-like bounds. In
a flash she had crossed the wide hall--which was as it happened empty,
although she would not have slackened her pace for all the assembled
company--and was darting arrow-like up the stairs, her torn scarf