“The stones Rolf placed were the words of the song; the memory of my mother was the music. When I said the Tower was poverty stricken, I was blind. More rich than an altar-shrine I think it, now that I know what a woman’s love may mean. Jarl’s sister, you could not even dream such visions as my memory gave me to see in the moonlight there!... Visions of my king-born mother watering linen on the grass before the Tower ... bringing drink to Rolf as he rested from his labor ... standing waiting to bear back the cup when he should have finished, the leaf-shadows playing on the soft masses of her hair.... Waiting before him, Freya, the king-born! As I live, it looks to me now as if it must have been a dream! Here, I cannot myself believe it.”
“I can,” the Jarl’s sister said dreamily, then started awake as she saw passion flame up in his face past any checking. As a straw, it burned away the barrier she sought to raise.
“Brynhild! If you had aught to give me, it cannot be that you would hold it back! I will await your pleasure. I will wrestle with the roughness in me even as Rolf wrestled with the bowlders, till I have made my mind a place more worthy of your dwelling. But even as Freya cheered with her love the man who loved her, give me some token that in time your pride will yield! Some sign!”
“What would you?” she murmured. “My hands—”
He seized them both, crushed them against his lips. But he stayed not at the arm’s-length she would have kept him. Holding her hands, he leaned nearer; and the mystic might of spring throbbing in his veins purpled his eyes and held her like a spell.
“Your mouth!” he prayed. “Olaf—Gunnar—fifty others—have had your hands. Your mouth!”
He knew not that he drew her towards him; doubtless she knew not that she yielded. Only, each knew that her lips were there before his, and he had gathered their perfect flower.
XV
“Bare is back without brother behind it”
—Northern saying.