"And you would do it?" she asked.
"Madam, my struggle was fought before she died. But now you know that my love was not yours."
"That also I knew before, sir;" and a slight, bitter smile came on her face. But she grew grave again, and sat there, seeming to be pondering, and Prince Ludwig waited on his knees. Then she suddenly leant forward and said:
"If I loved I would wait for you to love. Now what is the love that I cannot feel?"
And then she sat again silent, but at last raised her eyes again to his, saying in a voice that even in the stillness of the room he hardly heard:
"Now I do dearly love you, for I have seen your love, and know that you can love; and I think that love must breed love, so that she who loves must in God's time be loved. Yet"—she paused here, and for a moment hid her face with her hand—"yet I cannot," she went on. "Is it our Lord Christ who bids us take the lower place? I cannot take it He does not so reign in my heart. For to my proud heart—ah, my heart so proud!—she would be ever between us. I could not bear it. Even though she is dead, I could not bear it. Yet I believe now that with you I might one day find happiness."
The prince, though in that hour he could not think of love, was yet very much moved by her new tenderness, and felt that what had passed rather drew them together than made any separation between them. And it seemed to him that the dead lady's blessing was on his suit, so he said:
"Madam, I would most faithfully serve you, and you would be the nearest and dearest to me of all living women."
She waited a while, then she sighed heavily, and looked in his face with an air of wistful longing, and she knit her brows as though she were puzzled. But at last, shaking her head, she said:
"It is not enough."