It was a piece of exquisite daring, and with an older man it would have taken effect.  Saltash would have laughed his quizzing, cynical laugh and accepted his defeat with royal grace.  But Bunny was young and vehement of impulse, and the flame of his anger still scorched his soul with a heat intolerable.  She had baffled him, astounded him, humiliated him, and his was not a nature to endure such treatment tamely.

He hung on his stride for a single moment, then hotly he turned and snatched her into his arms.

CHAPTER XIII

THE END OF THE GAME

She cried out sharply as he caught her, and then she struggled and fought like a mad creature for freedom.  But Bunny held her fast.  He had been hard pressed, and now that the strain was over, all the pent passion of that long stress had escaped beyond control.  He held her,—­at first as a boy might hold a comrade who had provoked him to exasperation; then, as desperately she resisted him, a new element suddenly rushed like fire through his veins, and he realized burningly, overwhelmingly, that for the first time in his life he held a woman in his arms.

It came to him like a blinding revelation, and forth-with it seemed to him that he stepped into a new world.  She had tried him too far, had thrown him off his balance.  He was unfit for this further and infinitely greater provocation.  His senses swam.  The touch of her intoxicated him as though he had drunk a potent draught from some goblet of the gods.  He heard himself laugh passionately at her puny effort to resist him and the next moment she was at his mercy.  He was pressing fevered kisses upon her gasping, quivering lips.

But she fought against him still.  Though he kissed her, she would have none of it.  She struck at him, battering him frantically with her hands, stamping wildly with her feet, till he literally swung her off the ground, holding her slender body against his breast.

“You little madcap!” he said, with his hot lips against her throat.  “How dare you?  Do you think I’d let you go—­now?”

The quick passion of his voice or the fiery possession of his hold arrested her.  She suddenly ceased to battle with him, and stiffened in his grasp as if turned to stone.

“Let me go!” she said tensely.

“I will not,” said Bunny.

He was mad with the fever of youth; he held her with a fierce exultation.  There could be no returning now, nor did he wish to return.

“You little wild butterfly!” he said, and kissed the throbbing white throat again.  “I’ve caught you now and you can’t escape.”

“You’ve—­had your revenge,” Toby flung back gaspingly.  “You—­you—­you’re a skunk if you take any more.”

Oddly that sobered him as any protest more feminine would have failed to do.  He set her on her feet, but he held her still.

“I haven’t done with you,” he said, with a certain doggedness.