He still held her slender fingers in his brown sinewy hands as if he would suck in more of that ethereal fluid fire.
"You would have come of your own accord because of your interest in Albrecht von Waldstein?" There was approval, condescension, petition for her assent in his tones.
"Something of you grew into my girlhood, Albrecht! I cannot tell how. When you, a simple gentleman of Bohemia, came to my father and in his troubled hour offered to raise up an army to defend him against his enemies, I had a feeling of exultation. Something told me that here was greatness, a new Hercules come to earth."
Wallenstein's eyes, those cold eyes of his, glowed at her saying. Prodigious egotist that he was! He accepted her words as those of an oracle. He drank in the significance of her words, but of their relation to the feelings of the priestess that uttered them he divined less even than he valued them. To him her words confirmed him in his own estimate of himself. But he was too little a connoisseur of precious nonsubstantial things to show surprise or wonder at the priceless worth of that young princess's worship.
"Six years ago," he said, "you acclaimed my star on the horizon of your heart."
"Yes, Albrecht! And then when you came again, do you remember my poor sprigs of laurel which I was almost too shy to give you?"
"I have them yet, Stephanie!" It was true. He had them. They were an emblem of his advancing fortunes bestowed by the daughter of the Emperor. Of the heart that had prompted the gift, the shy, proud, full, maidenly heart, he had known nothing.
"And as your star waxed, so I rejoiced and said, 'Albrecht von Waldstein is become equal to the greatest princes of the earth.' You and your armies filled all my mind. My pride in you became a great part of me."
Her eyes were cast down so that he saw little but the soft black fringes of the lids; her rich voice was modulated to all but a whisper. And as the man gazed at her, drinking in her words and watching the heave and fall of her bosom, an unusual gentleness crept over him and he began to see the wonder of her.
"Gracious and beautiful princess!" he said. "To think that as I climbed I knew nothing of the spirit that spoke secretly to mine and urged me forward and upward." There was something of self-reproach in his tone as for something beautiful in a glimpse of the valley that a climber misses and learns of in after days.