Some posters on other sites are saying she ‘let him win’ and shouldn’t have let it bother her so much.
All I can say is, until something like that happens to you, and in that setting, you don’t know how you’re going to react.
Add this to the fact that she doesn’t strike me as an intimidating or physically combative person. She may not have been physically aggressive with anyone since grammar school, if ever. Some girls are still raised that way. Even some boys, nowadays, are told to ‘avoid trouble’ and not fight back. From now on, I suspect, she will have a game plan of some kind.
Shock value is her not knowing what she was doused in; and, then not being able to get past thoughts of the actual attacks that have been carried out with chemical agents in Europe. A terrorist action even though only water was used in this instance—a message which is pure intimidation.