Gerda listened; and it was pleasant enough to talk to her, looking into her bright face; but she did not seem to understand much of what he said.
He promised to give her eleven golden apples from Iduna's grove if she would go with him, and that she should have the magic ring Draupnir from which every day a still fairer jewel fell. But he found there was no use in talking of beautiful things to one who had never in all her life seen anything beautiful. Gerda smiled at him as a child smiles at a fairy tale.
At length he grew angry. "If you are so childish, maiden," he said, "that you can believe only what you have seen, and have no thought of Aesirland or the Aesir, then sorrow and utter darkness shall fall upon you; you shall live alone on the Eagle Mount turned towards Hel. Terrors shall beset you; weeping shall be your lot. Men and Aesir will hate you, and you shall be doomed to live for ever with the Frost Giant, Ryme, in whose cold arms you will wither away like a thistle on a house-top."
"Gently," said Gerda, turning away her bright head, and sighing. "How am I to blame? You make such a talk of your Aesir and your Aesir; but how can I know about it, when all my life long I have lived with giants?"
At these words, Skirnir rose as if he would have departed, but Gerda called him back. "You must drink a cup of mead," she said, "in return for your sweet-sounding words."
Skirnir heard this gladly, for now he knew what he would do. He took the cup from her hand, drank off the mead, and, before he returned it, he contrived cleverly to pour in the water from his drinking-horn, on which Frey's image was painted; then he put the cup into Gerda's hand, and bade her look.
She smiled as she looked; and the longer she looked, the sweeter grew her smile; for she looked for the first time on a face that loved her, and many things became clear to her that she had never understood before. Skirnir's words were no longer like fairy tales. She could now believe in Aesirland, and in all beautiful things.
"Go back to your master," she said, at last, "and tell him that in nine days I will meet him in the warm wood Barri."
After hearing these joyful words, Skirnir made haste to take leave, for every moment that he lingered in the giant's house he was in danger. One of Gerda's maidens conducted him to the door, and he mounted his horse again, and rode from Jötunheim with a glad heart.
PART IV