How I hate him! How I have always hated him,—this Nils Lykke!—There lives not another man like him, 'tis said. He plays with women—and treads them under his feet.
And 'twas to him my mother thought to offer me!—How I hate him!
They say Nils Lykke is unlike all other men. It is not true! There is nothing strange in him. There are many, many like him! When Biörn used to tell me his tales, all the princes looked as Nils Lykke looks. When I sat lonely here in the hall and dreamed my histories, and my knights came and went,—they were one and all even as he.
How strange and how good it is to hate! Never have I known how sweet it can be—till to-night. Ah—not to live a thousand years would I sell the moments I have lived since I saw him!—
"God's holy blood, but she is proud"
[Goes slowly towards the back, opens the window and looks out. Nils Lykke comes in by the first door on the right.
Nils Lykke.
[To himself.] "Sleep well at Östråt, Sir Knight," said Inger Gyldenlöve as she left me. Sleep well? Ay, 'tis easily said, butOut there, sky and sea in tumult; below, in the grave-vault, a young girl on her bier; the fate of two kingdoms in my hand;—and in my breast a withered flower that a woman has flung at my feet. Truly, I fear me sleep will be slow of coming.
