NILS LYKKE (embraces her). Elina!
ELINA (after a short pause). Will you come nevermore to Ostrat?
NILS LYKKE. How can you doubt that I will come? Are you not henceforth my betrothed?—But will you be true to me, Elina? Will you not forget me ere we meet again?
ELINA. Do you ask if I will be true? Have I any will left then? Have I power to be untrue to you, even if I would?—you came by night; you knocked upon my door;—and I opened to you. You spoke to me. What was it you said? You gazed in my eyes. What was the mystic might that turned my brain and lured me, as it were, within a magic net? (Hides her face on his shoulder.) Oh, look not on me, Nils Lykke! You must not look upon me after this—— True, say you ? Do you not own me? I am yours;—I must be yours—to all eternity.
NILS LYKKE. Now, by my knightly honour, ere the year be past, you shall sit as my wife in the hall of my fathers.
ELINA. No vows, Nils Lykke! No oaths to me.
NILS LYKKE. What mean you? Why do you shake your head so mournfully?
ELINA. Because I know that the same soft words wherewith you turned my brain, you have whispered to so many a one before. Nay, nay, be not angry, my beloved! In nought do I reproach you, as I did while yet I knew you not. Now I understand how high above all others is your goal. How can love be aught to you but a pastime, or woman but a toy?
NILS LYKKE. Elina,—hear me!
ELINA. As I grew up, your name was ever in my ears. I hated the name, for meseemed that all women were dishonoured by your life. And yet,—how strange!—when I built up in my dreams the life that should be mine, you were ever my hero, though I knew it not. Now I understand it all—now know I what it was I felt. It was a foreboding, a mysterious longing for you, you only one— for you that were one day to come and glorify my life.