self canst foretell how dangerous thou wilt be, even as the warriors and the women tell me to beware of thee. Never yet did Olaf Tryggevesson shrink from danger. I have courted it on sea and land; and when the danger is as winsome as thou, my proud Gudrun, I will cast all warnings aside and make it mine.” He took her unresisting into his arms. “Ah! my Gudrun, if I can make a tender, loving wife out of thy sturdy spirit, it were a conquest worthy of a king, aye, worthy even of Olaf Tryggevesson, whom the Norsemen call their mightiest.”
Gudrun bent her head in silence.
“No word, my dark-eyed maiden? Well, then I must conquer thy words of love with my own. Go now, Gudrun, Thou art my betrothed bride.”
Gudrun was silently leaving, when Olaf called to her. “Yet stay a moment. Here is thy token.” He took the bracelet and clasped it on her upper arm where the long, flowing sleeve parted. Then, taking a bracelet from his own wrist, he placed it upon her other arm. “The token of our betrothal, Gudrun, and who dares show thee aught but reverence when thou dost wear the token from the king’s own arm?”
Then she glided away from him and was gone.
It was in a paroxysm of grief, humiliation, and anger that Gudrun told her mother that night of her interview with the king. She had sought out Olaf on an impulse; and now she was grieved at the part she had sworn towards the king, humiliated as she
