Therewith he clipped her and caressed her, and she spake nothing for a while; and he said; “Thy face is fair and bright; art thou not joyous of these minutes?”

She said:  “Thy words are sweet; but they pierce my heart like a sharp knife; for they tell me of thy death and the ending of our love.”

Said he; “I tell thee nothing, beloved, that thou hast not known:  is it not for this that we have met here once more?”

She answered after a while; “Yea, yea; yet mightest thou have lived.”

He laughed, but not scornfully or bitterly and said: 

“So thought I in time past:  but hearken, beloved; If I fall to-day, shall there not yet be a minute after the stroke hath fallen on me, wherein I shall know that the day is won and see the foemen fleeing, and wherein I shall once again deem I shall never die, whatever may betide afterwards, and though the sword lieth deep in my breast?  And shall I not see then and know that our love hath no end?”

Bitter grief was in her face as she heard him.  But she spake and said:  “Lo here the Hauberk which thou hast done off thee, that thy breast might be the nearer to mine!  Wilt thou not wear it in the fight for my sake?”

He knit his brows somewhat, and said: 

“Nay, it may not be:  true it is that thou saidest that no evil weird went with it, but hearken!  Yesterday I bore it in the fight, and ere I mingled with the foe, before I might give the token of onset, a cloud came before my eyes and thick darkness wrapped me around, and I fell to the earth unsmitten; and so was I borne out of the fight, and evil dreams beset me of evil things, and the dwarfs that hate mankind.  Then I came to myself, and the Hauberk was off me, and I rose up and beheld the battle, that the kindreds were pressing on the foe, and I thought not then of any past time, but of the minutes that were passing; and I ran into the fight straightway:  but one followed me with that Hauberk, and I did it on, thinking of nought but the battle.  Fierce then was the fray, yet I faltered in it; till the fresh men of the Romans came in upon us and broke up our array.  Then my heart almost broke within me, and I faltered no more, but rushed on as of old, and smote great strokes all round about:  no hurt I got, but once more came that ugly mist over my eyes, and again I fell unsmitten, and they bore me out of battle:  then the men of our folk gave back and were overcome; and when I awoke from my evil dreams, we had gotten away from the fight and the Wolfing dwellings, and were on the mounds above the ford cowering down like beaten men.  There then I sat shamed among the men who had chosen me for their best man at the Holy Thing, and lo I was their worst!  Then befell that which never till then had befallen me, that life seemed empty and worthless and I longed to die and be done with it, and but for the thought of thy love I had slain myself then and there.