'Wouldest thou know how truly my heart clings to thee?' she said.
She made the King sit down on an overturned boat. She knelt down at his feet.
'King Olaf,' she said, 'I will no longer be Queen. She who loves as greatly as I love thee cannot be a Queen. I wish thou wouldest go far into the forest, and let me be thy bondwoman. Then I should have leave to serve thee every day. Then I would prepare thy food, make thy bed, and watch over thy house whilst thou slept. None other should have leave to serve thee, except I. When thou returnest from the chase in the evening, I would go to meet thee, and kneel before thee on the road and say: "King Olaf, my life is thine." And thou wouldest laugh, and lower thy spear against my breast, and say: "Yes, thy life is mine. Thou hast neither father nor mother; thou art mine, and thy life is mine."'
As Astrid said this, she drew, as if in play, King Olaf's sword out of its sheath. She laid the hilt in the King's hand, but the point she directed towards her own heart.
'Say these words to me, King Olaf,' she said, 'as if we were alone in the forest, and I were thy bondwoman. Say: "Thy life is mine."'
'Thy life is God's,' said the King.
Astrid laughed lightly.
'My life is thine,' she repeated, in the tenderest voice, and the same moment King Olaf felt that she pressed the point of the sword against her breast.
But the King held the sword with a firm hand, even when in play. He drew it to him before Astrid had time to do herself any harm. And he sprang up. For the first time in his life he trembled from fear. The Queen would die at his hand, and she had not been far from attaining her wish. At the same moment he had an inspiration, and he understood what was the cause of her despair.
'She has committed a sin,' he thought. 'She has a sin upon her conscience.'