"Complimenting me? Yes, I suppose he was—on not having done you any harm. Why? Because I couldn't!"
"You wouldn't wish to, Countess?"
"No; but I might wish to be able to, Cæsar."
She stood there the embodiment of a power the greater because it feigned distrust of its own might.
"No, I don't mean that," she continued a moment later. "But I should——" She drew near to me and, catching up a little chair, sat down on it, close to my elbow. "Ah, how I should like the Prince to think I had a little power!" Then in a low coaxing whisper she added, "You need only to pretend—pretend a little just to please me, Cæsar."
"And what will you do just to please me, Countess?" My whisper was low also, but full where hers had been delicate; rough, not gentle, urging rather than imploring. I was no match for her in the science of which she was mistress, but I did not despair. She seemed nervous, as though she distrusted even her keen thrusts and ready parries. I was but a boy still, but sometimes nature betrays the secrets of experience. Suddenly she broke out in a new attack, or a new line of the general attack.
"Wouldn't you like to show a little independence?" she asked. "The Prince would like you all the better for it." She looked in my face. "And people would think more of you. They say that Hammerfeldt is the real king now—or he and Princess Heinrich between them."
"I thought they said that you——"
"I! Do they? Perhaps! They know so little. If they knew anything they couldn't say that."
To be told they gossiped of her influence seemed to have no terror for her; her regret was that the talk should be all untrue and she in fact impotent. She stirred me to declare that power was hers and I her servant. It seemed to me that to accept her leading was to secure perennial inspiration and a boundless reward. Was Hammerfeldt my schoolmaster? I was not blind to the share that vanity had in her mood nor to ambition's part in it, but I saw also and exulted in her tenderness. All these impulses in her I was now ready to use, for I also had my vanity—a boy's vanity in a tribute wrung from a woman. And, beyond this, passion was strong in me.