Now his voice became almost dogged, though it lost nothing of its power. "I can't help it," he said; "I love you!"
The girl clutched nervously at her tea-gown and shrank back nearer yet to the door.
"Don't talk of love," she said in a low voice.
He took three quick steps up to her, and again she shrank away, not this time into the sure defence of her bedroom, but towards the window.
"Don't talk of love?" he said, and his voice reverberated and rang with feeling. "Why not? It is in the air—the very night is charged with love. You cannot look out on a night like this and not think of love."
"Don't, Colling; you frighten me," she said.
"Oh, but why should my love frighten you, my Peggy? My darling, it is brightness, tenderness, and love that you want. I know how monotonous and dull your life must be. Good God! don't I know it? Am I not always thinking of it? Poor little Butterfly! What a flutter you make to be free, to warm your dainty wings in sunny places! Peggy, sweetheart, I want to show you the sunny places."
"Please go, Colling!" she said, and her flute-like voice was tremulous with fear. "Please go, Colling! It isn't fair. I am afraid. You see, I am so fond of you, and I am such a little Butterfly!"
He held out his hands towards her, palms upwards, with a curious foreign gesture which showed how greatly he was moved. "I can't go, Peggy," he said. "I want you so badly—want you for my own—to-night—to-morrow, all the nights and all the days. I have been very good. I have always done what you have told me. I have come and gone just exactly as the whim has struck you. Ah! you know how deeply, how dearly I love you!"
She moved past him with a sudden, gliding step, and placed the settee between them.