With a sudden rush she was out of her chair, and the next moment she was kneeling beside him, her face all aglow with love and wonder.
"You mean it?" She could only, it seemed, question his meaning. "But—how did you know I loved you, Mr. Rose? I never let you see—did I?"
With that soft, sparkling face upturned to his, those Italian eyes gazing at him with an intensity of appeal in their liquid depths, one answer alone was possible.
"No, Toni, you never let me see that! But if it's true—if you do love me a little—well, is it—yes?"
For answer she suddenly laid her head on his knee and burst into a passion of wild sobbing. Poor, emotional, overwrought little Toni! Why she wept she had no idea, but it was the same emotion which had made her, as a child, weep at the sight of a group of violets growing in the grass, at the sound of the shepherd's pipe, the scent of the sea-laden breeze. Although her heart was so full of bliss that she could scarcely bear it, there was a wild, inexplicable sadness in it too, which tears alone could assuage; and though she tried to recapture her self-control, it was useless until she had cried away the first bewilderment.
But Owen, unused to the complex Southern nature, was thoroughly nonplussed by her tears. In vain he besought her to calm herself, begged her to listen to him, to refuse him if the thought of his offer made her miserable. Toni only cried the harder; and at last, uncertain of his ground, but feeling that something must be done, Owen stooped down and lifted her bodily on to his knee.
Once in his arms, her tears ceased as if by magic. She lay against his heart like a child, and as he felt her little body in his arms a new feeling of pity, almost of gratitude, awoke in his heart.
If his love meant so much to her—then it should be hers—if indeed love could be bestowed at will. In any case he would marry her and devote his life to making her happy; and in his curiously exalted state of mind Owen quite lost sight of the fact that when one is the lover and the other the beloved, between the two there is often a great gulf fixed.
When at last Owen roused the girl, who had sobbed herself into quiescence in his arms, the room was nearly dark.