“Nay, nay, sit here upon the chest by me—confess you I cannot—” He drew aside and made room for her.
She went on weeping; he stroked her hand, and said gently:
“Mind you that morning, Kristin, I first saw you there on the stairway in the Hamar church—? I heard a tale once, when I was in foreign lands, of a monk, who could not believe that God loved all us wretched sinners—Then came an angel and touched his eyes, and he beheld a stone in the bottom of the sea, and under the stone there lived a blind, white, naked creature; and he gazed at it until he came to love it, for it was so frail and weak. When I saw you sitting there, so little and so frail, within the great stone house, methought it was but reason that God should love such as you. Fair and pure you were, and, yet did you need a helper and a protector. Methought I saw the whole church, with you in it, lying in the hollow of God’s hand.”
Kristin said low:
“We have bound ourselves one to the other with the dearest oaths—and I have heard that in the eyes of God such a pact hallows our coming together as much as if our fathers and mothers had given us one to the other.”
The monk answered sadly:
“I see well, Kristin, someone who knew it not to the full has spoken to you of the canonical law. You could not bind yourself by oath to this man without sinning against your father and mother; them had God set over you before you met him. And is it not sorrow and a shame for his kin too, if they learn that he has lured astray the daughter of a man who has borne his shield with honour at all seasons—betrothed, too, to another? I hear by your words, you deem you have not sinned so greatly—yet dare you not confess this thing to your appointed priest. And if so be you think you are as good as wed to this man, wherefore set you not on your head the linen coif of wedlock, but go still with flowing hair amidst the young maids with whom you can have no great fellowship any more—for now must the chief of your thoughts be with other things than they have in mind?”
“I know not what they have in their minds,” said Kristin, wearily. “True it is that all my thoughts are with the man I long for. Were it not for my father and mother, I would full gladly bind up my hair this day—little would I care if I were called wanton, if only I might be called his.”
“Know you if this man means so to deal toward you, that you may be called his with honour some day,” asked Brother Edwin.
Then Kristin told of all that had passed between Erlend Nikulaussön and herself. And while she spoke she seemed not even to call to mind that she had ever doubted the outcome of it all.