He waited to take a fresh grip on his self-control.  When he spoke at last, it was with labored slowness:  “Every week for four months I have come to this door and asked the Englishman how he fared; and he has not wished for anything that I have not given it to him.  The night they left him with me, I could have put my fingers around his throat and killed him; and no one would have known.  But I held my hands behind me, and allowed him to live.  So far, I have kept my oath of friendship.  Do you wish me to go in with you and break it now?”

Before she could gather her wits together to answer him, he was gone.

Standing where he had left her, she stared after him, open-mouthed, until her eye fell upon the cabin among the bushes, when she forgot everything else in the world.  She ran toward it and threw open the door.

The low room was smoky and badly lighted.  Before she could distinguish her lover in the dimness, he was upon her, calling her name over and over, crushing her hands in his.  She cried out, and lifted her face, and his lips met hers, warm and living.  It was the same as though nothing had happened since last she saw him.

No, not quite the same; she saw that, the instant she drew back.  Alwin was very thin, and in the half-light his face showed white and haggard.  An ugly scar stretched half across his forehead.  At the sight of it her eyes flashed, and she reached up and touched with her lips the fiery mark.

“How I hate Leif for that!” Then she saw the greatest change of all in him, the quiet grimness that had come upon him out of his nights of pain and days of solitude.

“That is unfairly spoken, sweetheart.  I have but paid the price I agreed to pay if luck went against me.  Leif has dealt with me only according to justice; that I will maintain, though I die under his sword at the last.”

She drew a quick, sharp breath.  In the joy of recovery, she had let herself forget that he is only half alive who lives under the shadow of a death sentence.  She set her teeth over her lip to stop its trembling, and stiffened herself to the iron composure of a shield-maiden.

“It is true that you are yet in great danger.  His anger has not yet departed from him, for not once has your name passed his lips.  Sit down here and tell me what you think of your case.”

Alwin recalled the weeping and fainting of his mother’s waiting-women, in that far-off time of trouble, and pressed her hand gratefully as he took his seat by her side upon the bench.  “You are my brave comrade as well as my best friend.  I can talk with you as I would with Sigurd.”

Just for a moment she laid her cheek against his shoulder.  “It gladdens me that you are content with me as I am, instead of wishing me to be like Bertha of Trondhjem and other women,” she whispered.

Then the memory linked with that name caused her to straighten again and look at him doubtfully.  “Has Solveig told you all the latest tidings?”