“I know it,” answered Steinar, and there was something strange in his voice.  “Believe me, I do not slight fortune; I follow her in my own fashion.”

“Then it is a mad fashion,” grumbled my father, and walked away.

It comes back to me that it was some days after this that I saw the ghost of the Wanderer standing on his grave mound.  It happened thus.  On a certain afternoon I had been riding alone with Iduna, which was a great joy to me, though I would sooner have walked, for then I could have held her hand, and perhaps, if she had suffered it, kissed her.  I had recited to her a poem which I had made comparing her to the goddess Iduna, the wife of Bragi, she who guarded the apples of immortal youth whereof the gods must eat or die, she whose garment was the spring, woven of the flowers that she put on when she escaped from winter’s giant grasp.  I think that it was a very good poem of its own sort, but Iduna seemed to have small taste for poetry and to know little of the lovely goddess and her apples, although she smiled sweetly and thanked me for my verses.

Then she began to talk of other matters, especially of how, after we were wed, her father wished to make war upon another chieftain and to seize his land.  She said that it was for this reason that he had been so anxious to form an alliance with my father, Thorvald, as such an alliance would make him sure of victory.  Before that time, she told me that he, Athalbrand, had purposed to marry her to another lord for this very reason, but unhappily this lord had been killed in battle.

“Nay, happily for us, Iduna,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she answered with a sigh.  “Who knows?  At any rate, your House will be able to give us more ships and men than he who is dead could have done.”

“Yet I love peace, not war,” I broke in, “I who hate the slaying of those who have never harmed me, and do not seek to die on the swords of men whom I have no desire to harm.  Of what good is war when one has enough?  I would be no widow-maker, Iduna, nor do I wish that others should make you a widow.”

Iduna looked at me with her steady blue eyes.

“You talk strangely, Olaf,” she said, “and were it not known to be otherwise, some might hold that you are a coward.  Yet it was no coward who leapt alone on board the battle ship, or who slew the great white bear to save Steinar’s life.  I do not understand you, Olaf, you who have doubts as to the killing of men.  How does a man grow great except upon the blood of others?  It is that which fats him.  How does the wolf live?  How does the kite live?  How does Odin fill Valhalla?  By death, always by death.”

“I cannot answer you,” I said; “yet I hold that somewhere there is an answer which I do not know, since wrong can never be the right.”

Then, as she did not seem to understand, I began to talk of other things, but from that moment I felt as though a veil swung between me and Iduna.  Her beauty held my flesh, but some other part in me turned away from her.  We were different.