"Then you are pleased with me, Albrecht!" The wistfulness in her tone was quite apparent. For a moment the great lady was merged into the woman seeking approval from the man who sat upon the throne of her admiration.
"You are wonderful as well as beautiful!" said the Duke, not as a lover says these things, but with the air of the connoisseur of minds, deeply surprised that he has discovered a masterpiece where he looked merely for an ordinary work of art.
She coloured at his words and smiled. They pleased her, glibly as they ran off his tongue, but with a lover's ardour to waft them into air how much more would they have pleased her!
"Yes!" She went on as if following out another thought. "Events are moving fast towards the point we aimed at, your recall."
"My recall? Yes! Six months ago I was dreaming of recall."
In an instant she leaned forward anxiously to ask—
"Of what then do you now think if not of recall? To what end are you planning? Towards what have I planned and journeyed and striven?"
Wallenstein felt the annoyance that all self-centred men feel at making others partners in their plans. But he showed nothing of it as he answered—
"Of a confederacy of all German states on the basis of complete religious liberty! It is of that I am thinking."
She threw back her hood and opened her cloak. Then she asked with an amused air—