“Sleep you alone in the loft-room, now your kinsfolk are gone?” asked Erlend. “Then will I come and speak with you to-night—will you let me in?”
“Aye,” said Kristin low. And so they parted.
The rest of the day she sat with her father’s mother, and after supper she took the old lady to her bed. Then she went up to the loft-room, where she was to lie. There was a little window in the room; Kristin sat herself down on the chest that stood below it—she had no mind to go to bed.
She had long to wait. It was quite dark without when she heard the soft steps upon the balcony. He knocked upon the door with his cloak about his knuckles, and Kristin got up, drew the bolt and let Erlend in.
She marked how glad he was, when she flung her arms about his neck and clung to him.
“I have been fearing you would be angry with me,” he said.
“You must not grieve for our sin,” he said sometime after. “’Tis not a deadly sin. God’s law is not like to the law of the land in this—Gunnulv, my brother, once made this matter plain to me—if two vow to have and hold each other fast for all time, and thereafter lie together, then they are wedded before God and may not break their troths without great sin. I can give you the words in Latin when they come to my mind—I knew them once....”
Kristin wondered a little why Erlend’s brother should have said this—but she thrust from her the hateful fear that it might have been said of Erlend and another—and sought to find comfort in his words.
They sat together on the chest, he with his arm about her, and now Kristin felt that ’twas well with her once more and she was safe—beside him was the only spot now where she could feel safe and sheltered.