OLAF SKAKTAVL. Do? How should I know what I will do? It has never been my part to plot and plan. That is where you must help me. You have the wit for that. I have but my sword and my two arms. LADY INGER. Your sword is rusted, Olaf Skaktavl! All the swords in Norway are rusted. OLAF SKAKTAVL. That is doubtless why some folk fight only with their tongues.—Inger Gyldenlöve—great is the change in you. Time was when the heart of a man beat in your breast. LADY INGER. Put me not in mind of what _was_. OLAF SKAKTAVL. ’Tis for that very purpose I am here. You _shall_ hear me, even if—— LADY INGER. Be it so then; but be brief; for—I must say it—this is no place of safety for you. OLAF SKAKTAVL. Östråt is no place of safety for an outlaw? That I have long known. But you forget that an outlaw is unsafe wheresoever he may wander. LADY INGER. Speak then; I will not hinder you. OLAF SKAKTAVL. ’Tis nigh on thirty years now since first I saw you. It was at Akershus[18] in the house of Knut Alfson and his wife. You were little more than a child then; yet were you bold as the soaring falcon, and wild and headstrong too at times. Many were the wooers around you. I too held you dear—dear as no woman before or since. But you cared for nothing, thought of nothing, save your country’s evil case and its great need. LADY INGER. I counted but fifteen summers then—remember that! And was it not as though a frenzy had seized us all in those days? OLAF SKAKTAVL. Call it what you will; but one thing I know—even the old and sober men among us thought it written in the counsels of the Lord on high that you were she who should break our thraldom and win us all our rights again. And more: you yourself then thought as we did. LADY INGER. ’Twas a sinful thought, Olaf Skaktavl. ’Twas my proud heart, and not the Lord’s call, that spoke in me. OLAF SKAKTAVL. You _could_ have been the chosen one had you but willed it. You came of the noblest blood in Norway; power and riches were soon to be yours; and you had an ear for the cries of anguish—then!