"It is the kingdom of Death," she said to herself.
And she, who had a while ago been so eager, active, and commanding, felt herself now sinking into a quiet calm. The effort of will was at an end, hopes and desires were gone.
It is dangerous, perhaps, for a mortal to make an ally of Death. For Death may take it in earnest.
And Sigrun seemed really to feel a change taking place in herself. All the links that bound her to her former life were being loosened one by one.
Love of her husband, the sorrow and misery of her married life, had filled all her thoughts before. But now, all this faded and disappeared. A great void was where it had been, but no regrets, no bitterness.
"The dead must feel like this," she thought. "Thus it must be to be freed from all earthly things. Love and sorrow disappear."
Little foolish things she had said as a child, and had been ashamed of ever since, little offences that had troubled her long, little humiliations she had never forgotten—all these vanished now in a moment. Hereafter, she would think of these as things that no longer concerned her.
She thought of her parents, and the help they had always given her—now she would never have to trouble them again for aid. All was new about her now; she was in another world. "They cannot reach me here," she thought. "They have stood by me up to now, as far as they could. Now I am gone from them for ever. I am driving into the kingdom of Death."
She was like a climbing plant, fastened with many threads to a trellis. Now, one after another was loosed, and soon the whole growth would fall to the ground.
"It must be like this to die," said Sigrun to herself. "It is not hard or painful at all, only a deep rest."