"No!... No, I won't!"
Alicia's voice suddenly broke the vibrant silence with the tremulousness of surprise, and immediately changed to a long gasp, as though something were weighing on her lips. Michael had thrown both his arms around her shoulders, mastering her, drawing her breast forward, pressing it against his own. His lips sought hers, but she made an effort to resist, by turning away with a violent straining of her neck. Finally the moan of protest ceased. Both heads remained motionless.
"Michael ... Michael!" she sighed, freeing herself for a moment from the caress. But a moment later she submitted again to those lips which pursued hers so eagerly.
She spoke in a tone of surrender. She was suddenly back in her past life, trembling at the contact of all those foreign things which seemed absolutely new through long continence. His ardent lips had overpowered her, awakened her from a dream that had lasted for years, in a sleep longer and deeper than Michael's.
She forgot everything around her. Her eyes were still open but the vision of the sea, the golden sunset in the sky, and even the pine boughs forming a canopy above their heads, had disappeared from her gaze.
Suddenly she saw them all once more, and at the same time she drew back her shoulders repelling him.
"No, I won't.... Stop! They might see us. How crazy of us!"
The Prince was an athlete, but his emotion weakened him. Besides, his energy was scattered in the double effort of trying to master the woman and at the same time of enjoying her caress in the overwhelming fury of passion. She bent and straightened several times, with all the suppleness of a reptile, finally succeeding in escaping from the chain of his arms, as she gave a sigh of weariness and relief.
Lubimoff, coming to himself again, saw Alicia standing in front of him, smoothing her disordered clothing, and raising her hands to her hair, to her tilted hat and her boa, which was slipping from her shoulders.
"Let us go," she said, with angry brevity.