“High is she or low, sleeping or perchance awakened: naught reck I. She also mourned for Eric, and we went nigh to mingling tears—near together were brown curls and golden,” and she laughed aloud.
“Thou art surely fey, thou evil girl!” said Asmund.
“Ay, foster-father, fey: yet is this but the first of my feydom. Here starts the road that I must travel, and my feet shall be red ere the journey’s done.”
“Leave thy dark talk,” said Asmund, “for to me it is as the wind’s song, and listen: a good thing has befallen thee—ay, good beyond thy deserving.”
“Is it so? Well, I stand greatly in need of good. What is thy tidings, foster-father?”
“This: Atli the Earl asks thee in marriage, and he is a mighty man, well honoured in his own land, and set higher, moreover, than I had looked for thee.”
“Ay,” answered Swanhild, “set like the snow above the fells, set in the years that long are dead. Nay, foster-father, this white-bearded dotard is no mate for me. What! shall I mix my fire with his frost, my breathing youth with the creeping palsy of his age? Never! If Swanhild weds she weds not so, for it is better to go maiden to the grave than thus to shrink and wither at the touch of eld. Now is Atli’s wooing sped, and there’s an end.”
Asmund heard and grew wroth, for the matter seemed strange to him; nor are maidens wont thus to put aside the word of those set over them.
“There is no end,” he said; “I will not be answered thus by a girl who lives upon my bounty. It is my rede that thou weddest Atli, or else thou goest hence. I have loved thee, and for that love’s sake I have borne thy wickedness, thy dark secret ways, and evil words; but I will be crossed no more by thee, Swanhild.”
“Thou wouldst drive me hence with Groa my mother, though perchance thou hast yet more reason to hold me dear, foster-father. Fear not: I will go—perhaps further than thou thinkest,” and once more Swanhild laughed, and passed from him into the darkness.