The long-silenced chords now sounded loudly in Helga's heart, memory awoke, and the fairy king's harp was not near to lull it to sleep again.
"My dear, good father," she said, thinking now of none but him, "weep not. Your Helga lives and is happy; but how old you have grown, and how white your hair is!"
"Yes, Helga, I had lost you, my only child; but now that I have found you my youthful vigour will return. Come home quickly, my daughter. How glad Olaffson will be."
At these words Helga's heart trembled. "My dear, dear father," she said, gently stroking the furrowed cheeks, "I cannot go with you; I belong now to another world." Then she told her astonished father all that had happened to her since the hour when she said good-bye to him at the edge of the lava-field.
"I have given my word," she concluded, "and, hard as it seems not to go with you, I dare not, I dare not."
"Alas, my child, my poor unhappy child!" said the father sorrowfully; "into what hands have you fallen?"
"Into the best and tenderest, my father," said Helga, soothingly. "Would that my husband were at home, that you might see him; but I will show you my kingdom, that your mind may be set at rest."
She took her father's hand and led him towards the side of the rock which concealed the entrance into the fairy land. She touched it, but the door remained closed; again and again she passed her hand over the hard stone, but there was no movement.
Helga's heart throbbed as though it would break, and she sank down on the hard ground, begging with bitter tears for admission to her kingdom; but all was still, dead, and motionless.
Poor Helga! Without knowing it, she had transgressed the laws of the fairies by speaking to a mortal of the mysteries of the spirit-world, and now its gates were barred against her. With bitter regret she now remembered her husband's parting command—not to return to the outer world, to which she had no longer any right. Soon, she thought, will the other awful threat be fulfilled, and she sank unconscious into her father's arms.