"Oh, you can't understand, of course! You've never understood—you've never known how much I've loved you—oh, it's no use being angry! I know quite well I've no right to speak. You're married, a great lady now, by all I hear—but I love you—Toni—oh, my God, how I love you!" The sweat stood in great drops on his brow as he hurried on, a certain rough eloquence in his words. "After all, I'm a man, I've a right to love you—or any woman—and I've loved you now for years—it's not something new, just a passing attraction—it's part of me, something in my very bones, as near me as breathing or sleeping or thinking—I'm simply eaten up with love for you, Toni. You're my life, my everything. I'd die for you, I'd go through fire end water for you, I'd do anything in the world, bad or good, dishonourable or splendid, if you'd be kind to me, smile on me, let me kiss your little feet...."
Toni, swept off her balance by his passion, said nothing, but stood opposite to him, panting a little; and after a second he went on with his wild confession.
"Oh, I know I'm wrong, I know you're hating me, despising me for telling you all this, but it's too much for me. I can't bear it alone any longer. It's driving me mad, Toni, mad, do you hear? At night I dream of you—sometimes I dream that you've been kind to me, that I've kissed you—kissed your little mouth, held you in my arms ... and then I wake and know you're another man's wife, and it makes the blood rush to my head and I see red, Toni, red...."
Something in his excitement warned the girl that she must soothe him.
"Hush, Leonard." In that moment she reverted to the days of their early friendship. "Don't speak so wildly. You—you frighten me."
He passed his hand over his brow, and when he spoke his voice was a shade quieter.
"I wouldn't frighten you for the world, Toni, you know that. I love you far too well ... oh, Toni, is it quite hopeless! Isn't there a glimmer of pity in your heart for me? Won't you ever give me a thought...."
"Leonard, how can I?" She spoke in a low voice, all Eva's horrid suggestions rushing over her in a flood. "I'm married; I can't ever be anything to you now."
"Oh, I know you're married." He caught his breath in a gasp. "But still—oh, Toni, you wouldn't come away with me, would you? I've got some money now. I'd be able to give you things, and I'd work for you till I died...."
At another moment Toni would have found occasion to wonder at his temerity in making the suggestion. She did not know how his imagination, fired by Eva's insinuations, played about the figure of Owen Rose's wife as the unloved victim of a man's callousness; and although she could see that Leonard Dowson was in deadly earnest, she had no conception of the sincerity of his belief that she had been wronged, trapped into marriage by a man who cared little for her, and neglected her openly.