"I do not insult you. I only give utterance to what you do not yet choose to confess to yourself. Do you imagine that you can with impunity pledge yourself to a man like my uncle? You still have ambition; he has long been done with it, and now cares only for gain. He has, it is true, won millions, and gold flows into his coffers from every quarter, but he is not content. The magnitude of his undertakings does not affect him, except as it brings him money, and once completely in his power he will require you to be the same. You will no longer create, you will only accumulate."
Wolfgang looked down gloomily; he knew that she spoke the truth; he had long known this side of the president's character, but his pride rebelled against the part thus assigned him.
"Do you think me so wanting in energy as to be unable to preserve my independence?" he asked. "I have a will, and if necessary can assert it, even in my present position."
"Then you will be given an alternative, and you will be obliged to submit. You have not chosen the hard, lonely path trodden by so many great men who could call nothing their own save their talent and their faith in themselves. For me,"--there was a kind of passionate inspiration in the girl's eyes,--"I have always imagined that in the striving and struggling there must be happiness perhaps even greater than that of attainment. To ascend thus from the depths, to be conscious that one's power increases with every step forward, with every obstacle overcome, and then at last to stand on the free heights in the joy of victory won by one's own exertions,--I have had some sensation akin to it when I have been climbing a difficult Alpine ascent, and not for worlds would I have accepted another's aid."
Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, she was again the free, unconventional child of the mountains, whom Wolfgang had once found amidst the abysses of the Wolkenstein, her curls waving, and quick to love as to hate. Together they had then bidden defiance to the tempest; in fancy he again heard her joyous, reckless laughter amid the hurly-burly, and it seemed to him that he had then been happy, supremely happy, as never again since then.
"And could you have loved a man who had risen thus?" he asked at last, with suppressed suffering in his tone. "Could you have stood beside him in toil and danger, perhaps in defeat? Answer me, Erna,--I entreat you!"
Erna shivered; the light in her eyes faded, as she replied, coldly, "What need to ask? The question comes too late! One thing I know: the man who denied and crushed out his love for the sake of the gold which another hand could bestow, who bought his future because he lacked courage to create it, I never could have loved,--never!"
She took a long breath, as if with the words she cast aside a burden, and turned her back to him. Griff suddenly became restless; he perceived the approach of the rest although their advance was as yet inaudible; his mistress understood him.
"Are they coming?" she asked, in an undertone. "Let us go to meet them, Griff."
She slowly crossed the meadow, where the dew lay heavy and glistening. Wolfgang made no attempt to detain her: he stood motionless. The last of the mountain-fires had just sunk to ashes; it glimmered aloft for a few moments like a faint and fading star and then vanished.