“Never, my loved one! Never again!” Aprilfaced, she leaned towards him. “It will always be good weather for you now. Always! You a song-maker, and doubt the summer because of a storm or two!”
“It must be because I am a song-maker that I have had faith in so many things,” he answered. “It is mercy I am asking of you, Brynhild. You have so much for my body,—have a little for my mind, that since first I saw you has been a leaf in the wind of your moods. Let me go while I can, before your fairness knits the net once more around me.”
As gently as might be, he gathered her other wrist into his clasp, and holding the two in one hand, laid the other on the door. She dared not struggle with him. But one way was left her. Light as the apple-blossoms float down, she drifted to her knees.
“My friend, you prayed me once to let you stay because to you it meant so much and to me—you thought—it meant so little. I beg the boon back from you. Stay, because it will be easy to you who are so generous in giving, and to me it would be so hard to give you up.”
As he had done that day in the road, he passed his hands before his eyes to clear them.
“This—and my blood on Eric’s blade—are the two last sights that ever I thought to see,” he murmured. “Yet since that one was true, it may be that this other is.” Looking down at her, a faint smile touched his mouth. “What dream-mockery to see you so,—you who twist me between your fingers like any willow out of the forest! But your work will seem better to you if you have your way in this. Until your mind changes, then!”
Releasing her, he sat down on the stool beside the door, his elbows on his knees, his head on his hands. From kneeling, she sank into a sitting posture on the rush-strewn floor beside him, glad perhaps to hide her face against his sleeve. It was he who kept their footing against the swaying shimmering dream-river that seemed to rise about them, and forded it at last to the shore of reality.
“Yet what right have I to a place in your hall, who have made myself an outlaw?”
Stifling a sigh, she walked on land again.
“It is unlikely that you will be banished. In the teeth of all the lawmen, Helvin has refused it. And while it may not turn out to your honor with the advice-givers, I think the Jarl will push it through by boldness. To-day, he rode out himself to seek counsel from Flokki of Iceland, who is the greatest man for bending the law to his wishes. I might be tempted to reproach you for doing this joy to your foe, my friend, if I did not guess that I have some blame for your temper.”