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.
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