His face had grown white, as no man had ever seen it. Even when spurs clanked on the path, he stood before her helplessly.
“I ought to have believed,” was all he could say.
Moving a step nearer, she laid her hands upon his breast and looked up at him with a little flickering smile.
“You would have believed—if you had loved me as I loved you,” she said.
She touched her finger to his lips, as he would have cried out.
“I do not think it is in your nature to feel much love for a woman, my friend. If you had not loved your own way better than me, would you not have entered the king’s service to win me, when only that lay between us? Your land—your chiefship over your men—the freedom to do as you pleased—all those you loved; and what was left over, you gave to me. It was not very much, was it? Yet perhaps it does not matter, since I was so glad to get it.”
Though her eyes were misty with tears, she held up her mouth to him bravely.
“I give you thanks for telling me,” he whispered softly, when he had kissed her.
As Erling’s voice sounded urgently, she drew her hood over her head and was gone.
It was a soberly thoughtful man that was pacing the garden-paths when Erling came back. They walked away the rest of the night in silence, while the moon went on in darkness, and the gray dawn which is neither light nor shadow spread coldly over the sky.