His tears had ceased, and a strange calm crept over him. “So it was that,” he thought to himself. “It was that I could not understand. But I see it now. I must choose between her and—my mission.”
The idea involved in this last word made him start.
“My mission—but how do I know it is that? Anyhow, whether or no, it does not matter. I have promised—I have given my word to one who is now dead—and that my father. I must either break my word to him, or desert her.”
He gazed thoughtfully up at the mountains.
“Those mountains there—how wonderful they are. Peak after peak rising to heaven, and sweet grassy slopes between. But loveliest looking down, on to the glassy lakes. Borgarfjall, with its great masses of rock, rising steeply up towards the sky. No one has ever set foot there—only the eagles have ever reached those heights.”
The look in his eyes faded, and he stood gazing vacantly before him.
“Desert her,” he thought to himself. “She who leaned towards me, and touched my cheek with her own. How could I think of it! She could never be faithless. How would she look if she learned?... Oh, the sight would kill me. Nothing more terrible to see than the eyes of a creature that has lost what it hoped for and believed in. To see that in her eyes....”
He laughed—a cold, forced laugh.
“What a coward I am, after all. I can think of leaving her, forsaking her, and breaking promises so sacred that they could not even be uttered in words. But I dare not even think of meeting her eyes when she knows. What a cur I must be—and I—I would go out into the world as an apostle.”
He shook his head.