“What would you I should say?” asked he without stirring.
“Oh—I know not—curse me—strike me—”
“’Twould be something late now,” answered the man; there seemed to be the shade of a scornful smile in his voice.
Ragnfrid wept again: “Aye—I heeded not then that I was betraying you. So betrayed and so dishonoured, methought, had I been myself. There was none had spared me. They came and brought you—you know yourself, I saw you but three times before we were wed—Methought you were but a boy, white and red—so young and childish—”
“I was so,” said Lavrans, and a faint ring of life came to his voice. “And therefore a man might deem that you, who were a woman—you might have been more afraid to—to deceive one who was so young that he knew naught—”
“So did I think after,” said Ragnfrid, weeping. “When I had come to know you. Soon came the time, when I would have given my soul twenty times over, to be guiltless of sin against you.”
Lavrans sat silent and motionless; then said his wife:
“You ask not anything?”
“What use to ask? It was he that—we met his burial-train at Feginsbrekka, as we bore Ulvhild in to Nidaros—”
“Aye,” said Ragnfrid. “We had to leave the way—go aside into a meadow. I saw them bear him on his bier—with priests and monks and armed yeomen. I heard he had made a good end—had made his peace with God. I prayed as we stood there with Ulvhild’s litter between us—I prayed that my sin and my sorrow might be laid at his feet on the Last Day—”