“I will not see him,” said Kristin quickly.
“The little dog I sent you once,” said Simon before they parted, “him you can let your sisters have—they are grown so fond of him—if you mislike not too much to see him in the house.
“—I ride north to-morrow early,” said he, and then he took her hand in farewell, while the sister who kept the door looked on.
Simon Darre walked downwards towards the town. He flung out a clenched fist as he strode along, talked half aloud, and swore out into the fog. He swore to himself that he grieved not over her. Kristin—’twas as though he had deemed a thing pure gold—and when he saw it close at hand, it was naught but brass and tin. White as a snow flake had she knelt and thrust her hand into the flame—that was last year; this year she was drinking wine with an outcast ribald in Fluga’s loft-room—The devil, no! ’Twas for Lavrans Björgulfsön he grieved, sitting up there on Jörundgaard believing—full surely never had it come into Lavran’s mind that he could be so betrayed by his own. And now he himself was to bear the tidings, and help to lie to that man—it was for this that his heart burned with sorrow and wrath.
Kristin had not meant to keep her promise to Simon Darre, but, as it befell, she spoke but a few words with Erlend—one evening up on the road.
She stood and held his hand, strangely meek, while he spoke of what had befallen in Brynhild’s loft-room at their last meeting. With Simon Andressön he would talk another time. “Had we fought there, ’twould have been all over the town,” said Erlend hotly. “And that he too knew full well—this Simon.”
Kristin saw how this thing had galled him. She too, had thought of it unceasingly ever since—there was no hiding the truth, Erlend came out of this business with even less honour than she herself. And she felt that now indeed they were one flesh—that she must answer for all he did, even though she might mislike his deeds, and that she would feel it in her own flesh when so much as Erlend’s skin was scratched.
Three weeks later Lavrans Björgulfsön came to Oslo to fetch his daughter.