ACT THIRD
The Banquet Hall. A high bow-window in the background; a smaller window in front on the left. Several doors on each side. The ceiling is supported by massive wooden pillars, on which, as well as on the walls, are hung all sorts of weapons. Pictures of saints, knights, and ladies hang in long rows. Pendent from the ceiling a large many-branched lamp, alight. In front, on the right, an ancient carven high-seat. In the middle of the hall, a table with the remnants of the evening meal.
Elina Gyldenlöve enters from the left, slowly and in deep thought. Her expression shows that she is going over again in her mind the scene with Nils Lykke. At last she repeats the motion with which she flung away the flowers, and says in a low voice:
Elina.
——And then he gathered up the fragments of the crown of Denmark—no, ’twas the flowers—and: “God’s holy blood, but she is proud and fair!”
Had he whispered the words in the most secret spot, long leagues from Östråt,—still had I heard them!
How I hate him! How I have always hated him,—this Nils Lykke!—There lives not another man like him, ’tis said. He plays with women—and treads them under his feet.
And ’twas to him my mother thought to offer me!—How I hate him!
They say Nils Lykke is unlike all other men. It is not true! There is nothing strange in him. There are many, many like him! When Biörn used to tell me his tales, all the princes looked as Nils Lykke looks. When I sat lonely here in the hall and dreamed my histories, and my knights came and went,—they were one and all even as he.