"Ah," she said in her tears, "you won't do that. He is jealous of you. You can see it."
"I see nothing of it, I assure you," Gunnar said, "and he has no cause. But there are many ways of curing jealousy, one of which is easy." She waited to hear what it was, but without asking. She wanted to know very badly, but Gunnar did not tell her what it was. So after a while of waiting she said, "You are hateful; I hate you," and walked away. Gunnar went out into the sun; and by and by she came back with needlework and sat where she could see him at his business of tending the temple-garth; but she would not speak to him for the rest of the day.
The season wore to the winter. With the first snow and the fall of the leaf men began to make ready for the winter feasts. There was now no question of Gunnar going. No man could travel that country in the winter when the days are but a few hours long, and the snow is deep and bends the trees to the earth. Gunnar, who did not want to go at all, put it jokingly to Sigrid that perhaps the god of the wolves wanted a human sacrifice, and that perhaps it was himself they wanted. She showed him her eyes full of trouble, and he was touched.
"You don't wish me to say that?"
She said, "I cannot bear you to talk lightly of such things."
"Frey would be glad of such a sacrifice, I am thinking."
She left him instantly and went to Frey. But she soon came back again. She was never long away from where he happened to be.
THE WINTER FEASTS