"Can princes alone—forget in Strelsau?"
"How should a poor student dare to—forget in Strelsau?" And as he spoke he made bold to step near her, and stood close, looking down into her face. Without a word she turned and left him, going with a step that seemed to dance through the meadow and yet led her to her own chamber, where she could weep in quiet.
"I know it now, I know it now!" she whispered softly that night to the tree that rose by her window. "Heigh-ho, what am I to do? I cannot live; no, and now I cannot die. Ah me! what am I to do? I wish I were a peasant-girl—but then perhaps he would not—Ah yes, but he would!" And her low, long laugh rippled in triumph through the night, and blended with the rustling of the leaves under a summer breeze, and she stretched her white arms to heaven, imploring the kind God with prayers that she dared not speak even to His pitiful ear.
"Love knows no princesses, my princess." It was that she heard as she fled from him next day. She should have rebuked him. But for that she must have stayed, and to stay she had not dared. Yet she must rebuke him. She must see him again in order to rebuke him. Yet all this while she must be pestered with the court of the Grand Duke of Mittenheim! And when she would not name a day on which the embassy should come, the king flew into a passion, and declared that he would himself set a date for it. Was his sister mad, he asked, that she would do nothing but walk every day by the river's bank?
"Surely I must be mad," thought Osra, "for no sane being could be at once so joyful and so piteously unhappy."
Did he know what it was he asked? He seemed to know nothing of it. He did not speak any more now of princesses, only of his princess; nor of queens, save of his heart's queen; and when his eyes asked love, they asked as though none would refuse and there could be no cause for refusal. He would have wooed his neighbor's daughter thus, and thus he wooed the sister of King Rudolf. "Will you love me?" was his question—not, "Though you love, yet dare you own you love?" He seemed to shut the whole world from her, leaving nothing but her and him; and in a world that held none but her and him she could love unblamed, untroubled, and with no trembling.
"You forget who I am," she faltered once.
"You are the beauty of the world," he answered smiling, and he kissed her hand—a matter about which she could make no great ado, for it was not the first time that he had kissed it.
But the embassy from the Grand Duke was to come in a week, and to be received with great pomp. The ambassador was already on the way, carrying proposals and gifts. Therefore Osra went pale and sad down to the river bank that day, having declared again to the king that she would live and die unmarried. But the king had laughed again. Surely she needed kindness and consolation that sad day; but Fate had kept by her a crowning sorrow, for she found him also almost sad. At least, she could not tell whether he were sad or not; for he smiled and yet seemed ill at ease, like a man who ventures a fall with fortune, hoping and fearing. And he said to her:
"Madam, in a week I return to my own country."