He did not retreat, opposing no resistance to the frantic drumming of her blows, watching her coldly, with something besides ice in the intensity of his mocking glance. Then, when from lack of breath her rage spent itself a moment, he said calmly, his glance in her glance, as a trainer's subduing a revolted animal, deliberate, slow, imperative: "Now, stop acting!" She caught herself up, tried to answer and found only another furious gesture. "I said, stop acting!" he repeated bruskly, and stepping to her, caught her in his arms. She cried out in a muffled strangled voice, turning, twisting, flinging herself about fruitlessly in the iron of his embrace. He held her silently until she ceased to struggle; and then his eyes continued to hold her eyes, fixed, imperious, compelling her gaze. She remained quiet--very quiet, looking at him startled, in doubt, seeing in him something new, masterful. And as he continued steadily looking into her eyes, penetrating beyond, overcoming all resistance, a smile came to her, a smile of confession, gathering from the cloudy blue of her eyes, running down the curve of her cheek, playing about the thin upturned lips. He bent his head deliberately. She did not turn aside her lips.... Then on this embrace came another, a convulsive frantic clinging of the lips, a kiss which conquered them both, flinging a mist across their eyes, stopping their ears, stilling their reason. This kiss, which went through her like a flame, blinding out the world, hurling into her brain a new life and a new knowledge, caught him, too, in the moment when he felt the strongest, the most able to dare. Neither his eyes nor his brain had foreseen this--nor the touch of her arms twining about his neck. He had a moment of vertigo in which he suddenly ceased to think. He kissed her again, and she answered hungrily, whispering: "I didn't know! Ah, you've come--" All at once his mind cleared as if a hand of ice had touched his forehead. He tried to put her arms from him, aroused, suddenly frightened at where he had been whirled by the immense combustibility of nature. But still she clung to him, her eyes closed, her lips raised, repeating: "At last--oh, at last!" "What have I done?" he said to himself, conscious-stricken at her glorified face. He stiffened against the soft arms, that sought to draw him back, saying hoarsely: "Dodo--listen, Dodo!" But she shook her head, pervaded suddenly by an incomprehensible ecstasy of weakness, the oblivion of absolute surrender. She opened her eyes once, and let them close again heavily. "Please," she said in a whisper, "don't--don't say anything. Don't talk.... It's all too wonderful!" Then, abruptly, he tore her away from him, grasping his coat, placing a table between them. "To-morrow!" he said, in a voice he did not recognize, knowing not what to believe, afraid of what he might say, amazed that all his will had gone. She gave a cry, extending her hands to him. "No! Oh, don't go!"