"Do get up from the ground, Mr. Revington," she said. "It is quite undignified; I dislike it very much."
He was too much carried away by his passion to observe the slight inflection of scorn in her tone.
"No, I will not rise," he answered. "I will kneel at your feet, like the veriest slave, until you retract your cruel refusal, and give me leave to hope."
"But I cannot do so," she answered, more gently. "Do be reasonable, and drop the subject, Mr. Revington. It is quite impossible, this that you ask. I do not love you, and I cannot be your wife."
"You might learn to love me," he persisted, almost sullenly.
"Never. You do not realize my ideal," the girl replied, with an unconscious blush.
"Tell me what your ideal is like, Irene," said her kneeling lover.
"I have read some lines that fit him," she replied, half dreamily, half to herself, and still with that soft blush on her beautiful face. "I will repeat them to you."
Yet she seemed to have forgotten him, as she fixed her eyes on the blue, rolling waves of the Arno, and the words fell like music from her beautiful lips:
"He to whom I give affection
Must have princely mein and guise.
If devotion lay below me,
I would stoop not for the prize
Bend down to me very lowly,
But bend always from above;
I would scorn where I could pity,
I must honor where I love.