“What ails you?”
“Are you mad?”—Helvin repeated his slow question—“that you dare to make my life into a song and tell it to my face?”
“Your life!” the Songsmith breathed. Then, even angrily, he swept the suspicion aside with his arm. “Lord, this is an unbecoming jest! You must know that such a song would be true of any man in the world.”
Futile as the dash of waves against a rock, the words fell down unheeded. Unmoved as a rock, Helvin stood gazing at him.
“Has your swooning so dulled your wits that you really cannot see that to sing that song in any one’s hearing would be to tell him that you saw me murder my father?”
It was too late to check the words, though Randvar’s arm had shot out in the attempt. Then he stood with his head gripped in his hands, like a man into whose mind a terrible truth is eating. As though he had forgotten he was not alone, he started when Helvin’s hand fell upon his breast and pressed him back upon the bench.
A strange softness had come into the voice of Starkad’s son,—a softness from which the ear recoiled as the hand recoils from the softness of decayed fruit.
“Now I see by your dismay at finding how near you had come to betraying me that it was neither madness nor treachery that prompted you, but the awful knowledge working in you as the awful guilt has worked in me. Of no avail to remind myself that he brought it on his own head—that I tried to keep away from him when I felt it coming but he forced me aside with him, goaded me until I could no more keep hold of myself than my shaking hands could keep hold of the leash—It may well be forgiven you that you shudder! I might have known that soon or late the horror must work out of you. Yet am I glad that I trusted you as long as was possible. Bear that in mind about me, even though it must come here to an end.”
With quick light step he went and shut the door. The sound of its closing fell ominously on the song-maker’s ears, even as a sense of smothering fell on him with the passing of the glimpse of sky. He asked slowly:
“Is it my death-warning that you give me?”