“I trow Simon will never lie on the ground to play with my shoes—not he!”
“No, for he can play with you in his bed,” said Arne. His voice made her feel sick and powerless all at once. She tried to push his head from off her lap, but he pressed it against her knee and said softly:
“But I would play with your shoes and your hair and your fingers, and follow you out and in the livelong day, Kristin, were you ever so much my wife and slept in my arms each single night.”
He half sat up, put his arm round her shoulder and gazed into her eyes.
“’Tis not well done of you to talk thus to me,” said Kristin bashfully, in a low voice.
“No,” said Arne. He rose and stood before her. “But tell me one thing—would you not rather it were I—?”
“Oh! I would rather—,” she sat still a while. “I would rather not have any man—not yet—”
Arne did not move, but said:
“Would you rather be given to the cloister then, as ’tis to be with Ulvhild, and be a maid all your days?”
Kristin pressed her folded hands down into her lap. A strange, sweet trembling seized her—and with a sudden shudder she seemed to understand how much her little sister was to be pitied—her eyes filled with tears of sorrow for Ulvhild’s sake.