“Aye, but I do,” answered Simon curtly. “If you think otherwise, you must even think better of it—” “Erlend Nikulaussön and I have vowed to each other by our Christian faith,” said she, trembling, “that if we cannot come together in wedlock, then neither of us will have wife or husband all our days—” Simon was silent a good while. Then he said with effort: “Then I know not, Kristin, what you meant when you said Erlend had neither drawn you on nor promised you aught—he has lured you to set yourself against the counsel of all your kin.—Have you thought what kind of husband you will get, if you wed a man who took another’s wife to be his paramour—and now would take for wife another man’s betrothed maiden—?” Kristin gulped down her tears; she whispered thickly: “This you say but to hurt me.” “Think you I would wish to hurt you?” asked Simon in a low voice. “’Tis not as it would have been, had you—” said Kristin falteringly. “You were not asked either, Simon—’twas your father and my father who made the pact. It had been otherwise had you chosen me yourself—” Simon stuck his dagger into the bench so that it stood upright. A little after he drew it out again, and tried to slip it back into its sheath, but it would not go down, the point was bent. Then he sat passing it from hand to hand as before. “You know yourself,” said he in a low tone, and with a shaking voice, “you know that you lie, if you would have it that I did not—You know well enough, what I would have spoken of with you—many times—when you met me so that I had not been a man, had I been able to say it—after that—not if they had tried to drag it out of me with redhot pincers.... “—First I thought ’twas yonder dead lad. I thought I must leave you in peace awhile—you knew me not—I deemed ’twould have been a wrong to trouble you so soon after. Now I see you did not need so long a time to forget—now—now—now—” “No,” said Kristin quietly. “I know it, Simon. Now I cannot look that you should be my friend any longer.” “_Friend—!_” Simon gave a short, strange laugh. “Do you need my friendship now, then?” Kristin grew red. “You are a man,” said she softly. “And old enough now—you can choose yourself whom you will wed—” Simon looked at her sharply. Then he laughed as before: “I understand. You would have me say ’tis I who—I am to take the blame for the breaking of our bond? “If so be that your mind is fixed—if you have the will and the boldness to try to carry through your purpose—then I will do it,” he said low. “At home with all my own folks and before all your kin—save one. To your father you must tell the truth, even as it is. If you would have it so, I will bear your message to him, and spare you, in giving it, in so far as I can—but Lavrans Björgulfsön shall know that never, with my will, would I go back from one word that I have spoken to him.”