He took her to his home in a hollow rock at the bottom of the sea, and he asked her to be his wife.
‘I cannot marry you,’ said Florimell. ‘I do not love you. My only love is Marinell.’
Then the cunning old shepherd by magic made himself look like a fairy knight, and thought that Florimell would love him.
‘I do not love you. I love Marinell,’ still was Florimell’s answer.
He then tried to frighten Florimell and make her marry him, whether she would or not. He turned himself into dreadful shapes—giants, and all sorts of animals and monsters. He went inside the waves, and made terrifying storms rage. But nothing that he might do would make Florimell consent to marry him.
At last he imprisoned her in a dark cavern.
‘She will soon tire of that, and then she will marry me,’ said he to himself.
But Florimell said the more, ‘I love only Marinell. I am glad to suffer, because I suffer for Marinell’s dear sake.’
She might have died there, and been buried under the sea-flowers of scarlet and green, and had the gay little fishes dart over her grave, and none might ever have known.
But, by happy chance, Marinell came that way. He heard her voice coming out of her prison far beneath the sea, like the echo of a sad song, and suddenly he knew that he loved her.