[1] The word "wraith" is here used in an obviously inexact sense; but the wraith seemed to be the nearest equivalent in English mythology to the Scandinavian "fylgie," an attendant spirit, often regarded as a sort of emanation from the person it accompanied, and sometimes (as in this case) typifying that person's moral attributes.
SIGURD. Hiordis, Hiordis!
HIORDIS. It has sunk into the earth! Yes, yes, now it has warned me.
SIGURD. Thou art sick; come, go in with me.
HIORDIS. Nay, here will I bide; I have but little time left.
SIGURD. What has befallen thee?
HIORDIS. What has befallen? That know I not; but true was it what thou said'st to-day, that Gunnar and Dagny stand between us; we must away from them and from life: then can we be together!
SIGURD. We? Ha, thou meanest——!
HIORDIS (with dignity). I have been homeless in this world from that day thou didst take another to wife. That was ill done of thee! All good gifts may a man give his faithful friend—all, save the woman he loves; for if he do that, he rends the Norn's secret web, and two lives are wrecked. An unerring voice within me tells me I came into the world that my strong soul might cheer and sustain thee through heavy days, and that thou wast born to the end I might find in one man all that seemed to me great and noble; for this I know Sigurd—had we two held together, thou hadst become more famous than all others, and I happier.
SIGURD. It avails not now to mourn. Thinkest thou it is a merry life that awaits me? To be by Dagny's side day be day, and feign a love my heart shrinks from? Yet so it must be; it cannot be altered.