“To me it would seem more becoming to carry out your lord’s business first.”
“Becoming it might be, but more imprudent than to lay aside a shield in unequal combat.”
“Unequal?” She managed to curl her flowerlike lips. “Hear a wonder! On Treaty Day, you claimed the victory over me.”
“Said I that I got the victory over you? Here now I do confess that you have me at your pleasure. If you bid me leave you, I can do nothing against it. If you refuse me your friendship, no power is strong enough to get it for me; though no man on earth will lack joy more than I, if that must be.”
One swift look she sent round to make sure that no one else could hear the low-voiced words, then sat tapping the chair arm with her jewelled fingers, her bosom rising and falling like a white billow under the lace of her kerchief. Out of the stormy deeps, passionate words rose at last.
“I do not wish that you should value me like that, any more than I want to feel the way you make me feel. Do you not know that your offence against me was heavier even than Olaf’s? He pushed my hands away, and recked little what I said; but you—though you stood with bound hands—you laid hold of my mind and moulded it to your will! You made of me—of me—a screaming shield-maiden, ready to slay my childhood’s friend! And then you stood there and laughed in your triumph!”
He said slowly: “True enough I laughed—for one breath’s space—and that passed for an offence; but for three months you have made me the soberest man in the New Lands. Is not that atonement?”
A glance she flashed to challenge his sincerity, but her eyes could not withstand his eyes’ steady wooing. She spoke without looking at him:
“If that were all! But you have done more. There is that which survives even that madness. Some door you have opened in my mind through which all my peace and pride have gone. Things I have never wanted before, now look good to me; and all I have seems as nothing, and the heavens reel around me, and I do not know one day what I am going to want the next. You have made me a thrall-woman in my own eyes, in proving to me that the passions that shake such base creatures can also shake me—that I can fear like them—hate like them—sin like them—love like them! Only if this be love, I tell you this,—that I will never yield to it! I will not love you!”
Her gaze was meeting his now with all a Valkyria’s weapon-play. It was he who lowered his eyes, lest their fire offend her.