And said he’d not partake with any thief;
  Although I stole to injure his despiser.... 
  But if he had abandoned me as well
  ’Tis I who should have been unmated now;
  For many men would soon have judged me thief
  And shut me from this land until I died—­
  And then I should have lost him.  Yet he smote me—­

                        ASTRID
  He kept you his—­yea, and maybe saved you
  From a debasement that could madden or kill,
  For women thieves ere now have felt a knife
  Severing ear or nose.  And yet the feud
  You sowed with Otkell’s house shall murder Gunnar. 
  Otkell was slain:  then Gunnar’s enviers,
  Who could not crush him under his own horse
  At the big horse-fight, stirred up Otkell’s son
  To avenge his father; for should he be slain
  Two in one stock would prove old Njal’s foretelling,
  And Gunnar’s place be emptied either way
  For those high helpless men who cannot fill it. 
  O mistress, you have hurt us all in this: 
  You have cut off your strength, you have maimed yourself,
  You are losing power and worship and men’s trust. 
  When Gunnar dies no other man dare take you.

                        HALLGERD
  You gather poison in your mouth for me. 
  A high-born woman may handle what she fancies
  Without being ear-pruned like a pilfering beggar. 
  Look to your ears if you touch ought of mine: 
  Ay, you shall join the mumping sisterhood
  And tramp and learn your difference from me.

  (She turns from ASTRID.)

  Steinvor, I have remembered the great veil,
  The woven cloud, the tissue of gold and garlands,
  That Gunnar took from some outlandish ship
  And thinks was made in Greekland or in Hind: 
  Fetch it from the ambry in the bower.

  (STEINVOR goes out by the dais door.)

                        ASTRID
  Mistress, indeed you are a cherished woman. 
  That veil is worth a lifetime’s weight of coifs: 
  I have heard a queen offered her daughter for it,
  But Gunnar said it should come home and wait—­
  And then gave it to you.  The half of Iceland
  Tells fabulous legends of a fabulous thing,
  Yet never saw it:  I know they never saw it,
  For ere it reached the ambry I came on it
  Tumbled in the loft with ragged kirtles.

                        HALLGERD
  What, are you there again?  Let Gunnar alone.

  (STEINVOR enters with the veil folded. HALLGERD takes
  it with one hand and shakes it into a heap.)

  This is the cloth.  He brought it out at night,
  In the first hour that we were left together,
  And begged of me to wear it at high feasts
  And more outshine all women of my time: 
  He shaped it to my head with my gold circlet,
  Saying my hair smouldered like Rhine-fire through,
  He let it fall about my neck, and fall
  About my shoulders, mingle with my skirts,
  And billow in the draught along the floor.