She did not shrink from him, but she raised an appealing face.

And oddly the man's heart smote him.

She looked so pathetically small and childish standing there.
But the blood was still running fiercely in his veins, and that momentary twinge did not cool him.

Child she might be, but she had played with fire, and she alone was responsible for the conflagration that she had started.
He drew near to her; he took her, unresisting, into his arms.
She cowered down, hiding her face away from him.

"Don't, Billikins! Please--please, Billikins!" she begged, incoherently.