After a moment, I said, “Where?” all the men frowning.
“To where we have come from, across the water,” he answered, pressing his lips together till he showed white round the mouth.
The men sat, perfectly silent.
He came slowly to his feet, stopped, and then began to speak, softly and strangely, with a great kindness.
“Ye do not ask it, but though I believe ye do not even want it, I will speak in justification. I would tell ye a few things. In that far place she had seen but few men, only woods and trees and natural things. The man to whom she was betrothed not against her will—I will be fair—was little more than these to her in that dreamy place. Slow and dull, he had nothing to answer in her own-taught beauty. When we came, she did love me, truly, but in her kindness, she would stay his wife. She had Freya’s soul. Her father’s brother liked me. Thus things were when the night came of our leaving.
“One more—I had never asked her to be not true to her betrothed, so, I was dreaming, my soul drawn all one way.
“That night when I sang her the love-song—oh ye men of my house, have ye never done wrong? Are ye sure that the souls within ye would stand firm while they were pulled with mighty cables? Have ye never had an evil thought? Have your spirits always been level within ye? Can ye never be mad, and rock to the torment of it? Do ye understand?
“Well, the music went out of my harp, and tore me—Are ye stone walls, that ye would not have shaken down like the leaves of trees? I could have wailed like a child for its mother, or, like a hammer on beams, crushed a man’s head with my hand.
“Are ye more than are men? Have ye never done any ill? I say, I stood there, dreaming, playing; my soul drew her to me; I stood there playing the old love-song, in agony. Then there was a noise of voices, and we went to the ship, and were many days coming home, being becalmed.”
He stared straight before him—a wakening came into his face—he on a sudden raised his hands in the air, and, the shaking fingers widespread, called through the hall in a strange voice. “Oh great Gods, come!”