Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/35

24 "No proof of wisdom if they did."

A little while before he had thought as she thought; a few months earlier and his incredulity of every such madness and emotion was not more scornful than her own; now, intoxicated with the disdainful beauty of the only woman who had ever cost him a moment's pang, he believed in all the wildest follies of romance, and would have staked everything he owned on earth, or wagered on the future, to move her and to win her. For the only time in his life he was baffled, for the only time powerless. His hands clenched where he stood before her.

"Hear me at the least before you banish me. Listen! what is there we might not compass together? You adore sovereignty, it should go hard if I did not give it you. You are ambitious, your ambition cannot overleap mine. We are both against the world; together we would subdue it. Empty thrones have fallen to hands bold enough to grasp them as they reel through revolutions; you and I might wear a crown if our aims and power were one. Love me, and there is no height I will not raise you to, no ordeal I will not pass through for you, no living man who shall baffle or outrun me. I have the genius that rules worlds—I would lay one at your feet."