YORUL Destroy me With blows of steel, not of remorse. None sent me. Myself hath driven me here, here to the cell Wherein my treachery consigned my master. Hear me!
EGIL I hear thee, Yorul.
YORUL Since that night, That bitter sunset when she—since that night Till now, I have not left the forest, nor Spoken with friend or foe; but I have stopped My heart in the deep silentness of trees Till it hath burst for pain. My wrong and thine, Thy wrong and mine—I dared to balance them, To let my woe condone my treachery And prove it justified, as if my heart Were not itself thy vassal, and its pangs Feudal to thy desires. And so I sinned Until to-day.
EGIL These are enigmas. Speak! How have the gods made answer to my prayer?
YORUL To-day I met with peasants in the wood Who drove their herds of swine all garlanded With green arbutus. Hailing me, they cried, “Why come ye not with us to Odin’s stone Against to-morrow’s wedding-day?” “Who weds?” Quoth I. “Our priestess Thordis weds the dwarf; Come with us!” Then I bit my arm and vowed That I would come to thee and speak my shame, And say, “Destroy me, lord, or let me serve thee.”
EGIL Peasants they were; they said—what was’t they said?
YORUL “To-morrow our priestess Thordis”—
EGIL “Weds the dwarf!” Those were thy words; thou shalt not change them now.
YORUL I would not change them.
EGIL Wouldst thou not? Well said! “To-morrow the maiden Thordis”—nay, not so; “To-morrow our priestess Thordis—weds the dwarf.” And all their swine were garlanded.—Was it so?