'She wishes me to understand that she belongs to those who wear chains. She confesses that she is a bondwoman.'
A thought again struck the King; he now understood everything.
'Has not the Svea-King a daughter who is the child of a bondwoman?' he asked suddenly.
He received no answer to this question either, but he heard Astrid shudder as if from cold. King Olaf asked still one more question.
'Thou whom I have made my wife,' he said, 'hast thou so low a mind that thou wouldest allow thyself to be used as a means of spoiling a man's honour? Is thy mind so mean that thou rejoicest when his enemies laugh at his discomfiture?'
Astrid could hear from the King's voice how bitterly he suffered under the insult that had been offered him. She forgot her own sufferings, and wept no more.
'Take my life,' she said.
A great temptation came upon King Olaf.
'Slay this wicked bondwoman,' the old Adam said within him. 'Show the Svea-King what it costs to make a fool of the King of Norway.'