of us, and seeking my lips. Almost she had found them, when, feeling something hard between me and her, something that hurt me, I looked down. Her cloak had slipped or been thrown aside, and my eye caught the glint of gold and jewels. In an instant I remembered—the Wanderer's necklace and the dream—and with those memories my heart froze again.
"Nay, Iduna," I said, "I loved you well; there's no man will ever love you more, and you are very fair. Whether you speak true words or false, I do not know; it is between you and your own spirit. But this I do know: that betwixt us runs the river of Steinar's blood, aye, and the blood of Thorvald, my father, of Thora, my mother, of Ragnar, my brother, and of many another man who clung to us, and that is a stream which I cannot cross. Find you another husband, Iduna the Fair, since never will I call you wife."
She loosed her arms from round me, and, lifting them again, unclasped the Wanderer's necklace from about her breast.
"This it is," she said, "which has brought all these evils on me. Take it back again, and, when you find her, give it to that one for whom it is meant, that one whom you love truly, as, whatever you may have thought, you never have loved me."
Then she sank upon the ground, and resting her golden head upon dead Steinar's breast, she wept.
I think it was then that Freydisa returned; at least, I recall her tall form standing near the stone of sacrifice, gazing at us both, a strange smile on her face.
"Have you withstood?" she said. "Then, truly, you are in the way of victory and have less to fear
