“Why you should love me, I know no reason at all,” he said. “I hope for it only as a priest hopes for a miracle. This alone I know,—that I love you, so that to waken in the morning and look forward to the hope of speaking with you is to sit in a Greenland winter and look forward to the summer. Will you not grant me the boon I beg because to you it means so little, and to me it means so much?”
“I will not say that it meant little to hear your songs and your adventures,” she answered presently, with courtesy. Soon after that, in the gloaming of her eyes a light flickered starlike. “Any more than I can deny that Freya’s son can be a courtman when he chooses,” she added. Then her mouth became as grave as it was gracious. “It may be that if you will give me your promise never to talk to me about—miracles—”
“So shall it be that I will take banishment from you as from a lawman, if once I break the agreement!”
After a moment she rose with queenful composure, stretching out her hand to the group around the entrance.
“Why do you allow the doors to remain open?” she called. “Our guest will not leave until he has partaken of our hospitality.”
With a crash, the great doors swung to, startling the Jarl where he stood in the darkness of the court-yard. At first he smiled whimsically, and made a gesture of drinking to his companion within. Then, as he turned to go back alone, the smile faded. The face he lifted to the stars seemed to be asking a bitter question of the planet that had stood over his birth.
XIII
“Mix hops with honey when thou mead wilt brew”
—Northern saying.
