In a while Erlend asked: “Are you not weary, my dear one?” And when Kristin nestled in to his breast, he folded his arms around her and whispered: “Sleep, sleep, Kristin, here in my arms—” She slipped deeper and deeper into darkness and warmth and happiness upon his breast. * * * * * When she came to herself again, she was lying outstretched in the grass with her cheek upon the soft brown silk above his knees. Erlend was sitting as before with his back to the stone wall, his face looked grey in the grey twilight, but his wide opened eyes were marvellously clear and fair. She saw he had wrapped his cloak all about her—her feet were so warm and snug with the fur lining around them. “Now have you slept in my lap,” said he smiling faintly. “May God bless you, Kristin—you slept as safe as a child in its mother’s arms—” “Have _you_ not slept, Sir Erlend?” asked Kristin, and he smiled down into her fresh-opened eyes: “Maybe the night will come when you and I may lie down to sleep together—I know not what you will think when you have weighed all things.—I have watched by you to-night—there is still so much betwixt us two that ’tis more than if there had lain a naked sword between you and me—Tell me if you will hold me dear, when this night is past?” “I will hold you dear, Sir Erlend.” said Kristin, “I will hold you dear, so long as you will—and thereafter I will love none other—” “Then,” said Erlend slowly, “may God forsake me if any, maid or woman, come to my arms ere I may make you mine in law and honour—Say you this too,” he prayed. Kristin said: “May God forsake me if I take any other man to my arms so long as I live on earth.” “We must go now,” said Erlend a little after, “—before folk waken—” They passed along without the wall among the bushes. “Have you bethought you,” asked Erlend, “what further must be done in this?” “’Tis for you to say what we must do, Erlend,” answered Kristin. “Your father,” he asked in a little, “they say at Gerdarud he is a mild and a righteous man. Think you he will be so exceeding loth to go back from what he hath agreed with Andres Darre?” “Father has said so often, he would never force us, his daughters,” said Kristin. “The chief thing is that our lands and Simon’s lie so fitly together. But I trow father would not that I should miss all my gladness in this world for the sake of that.” A fear stirred within her that so simple as this perhaps it might not prove to be—but she fought it down. “Then maybe ’twill be less hard than I deemed in the night,” said Erlend. “God help me, Kristin—methinks I _cannot_ lose you now—unless I win you now, never can I be glad again.” * * * * *