LITTLE SKULI. To beat Ingolf! No indeed!

KRISTRUN. Doddi dear, you do it! [Doddi runs for the whip, and gives it to her. She swings the whip around, so that it whizzes in the air.

As Ingolf pa.s.ses the piano, she runs the k.n.o.b of the whip along the key-board.]

LITTLE SKULI. Let's go, Doddi. [They go out.]

KRISTRUN. Are you tired?

INGOLF. I seem to feel lighter, in holding you on my shoulder.

KRISTRUN. Hf--! Lighter?

INGOLF. Yes, certainly!

KRISTRUN. Hf--! In carrying me?

INGOLF. In feeling the weight of your body. In that way, I could bear you to the end of the world.

KRISTRUN [hops down, looks straight into his eyes]. Really now, I refuse to listen to such foolishness.... Only look kindly at me once, instead of bearing me to the end of the world. [Sits down.]

INGOLF. Kindly!--Kristrun, do I deserve the cruelty you have shown me these last days.--Every moment of the day you have felt my soul streaming out to you, yet you choose the most common terms to describe my feelings, and pretend not to recognize them. I have been inventing new pet-names for you all the time, so that no one should have as pretty a name as you, so that you should have a prettier name to-day than you had yesterday. You pretend not to hear them. I have shown you every tenderness, but by your pretence you keep it at sword's length from you. You have been torturing me in this way now for three days.... Look kindly at you! Why, every time I look at you, you see my eyes shine through a tear-filled dimness...

KRISTRUN. Have you seen it in the gla.s.s?

INGOLF [keeps silent for a while, bites his lips, turns away from her].

Some women should not be allowed to be pretty.

KRISTRUN [laughs, dangling her foot]. Quite right. But men in turn, ought to be obliged to be handsome--otherwise they are disgusting.

INGOLF. Kristrun! Is it quite impossible to talk seriously with you? Is there nothing so sacred to you that you wouldn't ridicule it?

KRISTRUN. Well--?

INGOLF. No, I suppose there is not.

KRISTRUN.... Perhaps more than you think.

INGOLF. Why do you let me suffer, then? Haven't I confessed my love to you?

KRISTRUN. No, you haven't.

INGOLF [sits down at her side. While he speaks she sits erect in the chair, her hands folded in her lap, her head raised. A bright smile plays on her half-open lips. It is as if she were listening to a beautiful tale]. Are you waiting for me to say just the words: I love you! Weren't there moments when I made a greater confession, when one sigh, one glance, told you more than these words? But you are not satisfied with hearing a love like the fluttering of wings in the dead of night, you want to hear it sound like a clarion call in your ears: I love you, I love you! ... To-day I saw you standing at the piano, there; each feature in your face was in repose, each move blended softly into fine lines. I saw you as one of those works of art of an ancient master, which could lure the infidel to believe in the resurrection of the body.

What was my surprise, when I saw you move, and walk across the floor!...

Even your dress, altering its folds with the rhythm of your step, becomes mysterious, like the sea--floating, as it were, with life itself.... Only that fleeting sparkle from your eyes as you roll them upward... Or when you are lying down, and you stretch your foot out--so supple, that the tension on your arch makes your instep seem higher...

And then your everlasting vivacity: when you laugh, the air seems to float with tiny fairies ... I love you, Kristrun, only you, you, you.

[Kristrun still gazes into s.p.a.ce, dreamily. Ingolf reaches hesitatingly for her hand; discreetly, she withdraws it.]

INGOLF [gets up]. Did you lie to me, Kristrun? The other night, when I told you, without speaking, for the first time, just as plainly as now with words, that I loved you: we heard footsteps, you ran away, you turned around and kissed me, and disappeared--did this sweet kiss then lie, was it only a moment's impulse that played with a sacred feeling?

KRISTRUN. It was not, Ingolf.

INGOLF. But--?

KRISTRUN. It was a moment's impulse that played with a moment's impulse.

INGOLF. Perhaps for you, but not for me.

KRISTRUN. I thought your silent confession that evening was sincere.

The next day, I overheard a conversation between you and Hrafnhild, you didn't know I was there. Perhaps she has noticed the change in you. She used her voice, her intelligence, her beauty, her whole appeal, to get your caresses. And she got them, many and warm.

INGOLF. You yourself say that I have changed. You yourself say that I love you.

KRISTRUN. I myself say that you must choose between us.

INGOLF. My heart has chosen, Kristrun. And now my hand chooses. [He slowly takes the ring off his finger.] Are you satisfied now?

KRISTRUN. Why do you ask so sadly? Do you do this half-heartedly? ... I don't know whether I can trust you. Only yesterday, when she called you away from me, my heart throbbed with joy. The air about me sang: It is you he loves! But after a while, when she came out, she pa.s.sed me with a look of supremacy in her eyes. I saw it, I saw it... you are completely in her power.

INGOLF. Before the sun sets to-night, you will have to take back those words.

KRISTRUN. I fear the strength of her words when she pleads her own cause. It is as though she could charm you into her power by some magic.

Do you know what she did yesterday? She came up to me afterwards, and tried to arouse my anger, and so sure was she of her victory, that she gloried in it. She said that I could flirt with any one I wanted--she held the love of the finest man in Iceland.

INGOLF. Now do you think she said it because she was so sure?

KRISTRUN [does not answer]. "SHE held the love of the finest man in Iceland!..." Do you love me, Ingolf?

INGOLF. You don't need to ask, Kristrun.

KRISTRUN. Do you love me?

INGOLF. I love you.

KRISTRUN [runs to the chaise-longue, and throws herself upon it; she sobs audibly].

INGOLF. What is the matter with you, Kristrun?

KRISTRUN. Why don't you take me in your arms?

INGOLF. Now I am--Do you still doubt? I lived behind a dark, dark wall.

Through a crack in the wall a streak of light came in. I loved this streak. Then one day the wall tumbled down, and I bathed in a white sea of sunshine. Now I see that I only cared for Hrafnhild because of the natural likeness between you.

KRISTRUN. Do you think I would ever have let you suspect that I cared for you, if I did not know that you had stopped loving Hrafnhild. I began to care for you a long time ago, Ingolf. When I saw how happy Hrafnhild was, it seemed to dawn upon me how splendid you are. Every one envied her. You can imagine how I tried to crush my love. But it grew stronger each day,--it grew like a thorn into my heart. Yet, that did not matter. As long as I knew you loved Hrafnhild, I felt a greater obligation to my sister than to my love. But not any longer. Even were I to sacrifice all now, what would she gain, since you don't care for her?

INGOLF. I'll try to break off our engagement as gently as possible.

KRISTRUN. You promised to do it, before the sun sets to-night.