Bengt.
I am fain to hear you say it. Let me see that you deck you in your best attire, that our guests may say: Happy she who mated with Bengt Gauteson.—But now must I to the larder; there are many things to-day that must not be overlooked.
[He goes out to the left.
Margit.
[Sinks down on a chair by the table on the right.
'Twas well he departed. While here he remains
Meseems the blood freezes within my veins;
Meseems that a crushing might and cold
My heart in its clutches doth still enfold.
[With tears she cannot repress.
He is my husband! I am his wife!
How long, how long lasts a woman's life?
Sixty years, mayhap—God pity me
Who am not yet full twenty-three!
[More calmly, after a short silence.
Hard, so long in a gilded cage to pine;
Hard a hopeless prisoner's lot—and mine.
[Absently fingering the ornaments on the table, and beginning to put them on.
With rings, and with jewels, and all of my best
By his order myself I am decking—
But oh, if to-day were my burial-feast,
'Twere little that I'd be recking.
[Breaking off.
But if thus I brood I must needs despair;
I know a song that can lighten care.
[She sings.
