Act Second

(The room at Ostrat, as in the first Act.)

(LADY INGER GYLDENLOVE is seated at the table on the right, by the window. OLAF SKAKTAVL is standing a little way from her. Their faces show that they have been engaged in an animated discussion.)

OLAF SKAKTAVL. For the last time, Inger Gyldenlove--you are not to be moved from your purpose?

LADY INGER. I can do nought else. And my counsel to you is: do as I do. If it be heaven's will that Norway perish utterly, perish it must, for all we may do to save it.

OLAF SKAKTAVL. And think you I can content myself with words like these? Shall I sit and look quietly on, now that the hour is come? Do you forget the reckoning I have to pay? They have robbed me of my lands, and parcelled them out among themselves. My son, my only child, the last of my race, they have slaughtered like a dog. Myself they have outlawed and forced to lurk by forest and fell these twenty years.--Once and again have folk whispered of my death; but this I believe, that they shall not lay me beneath the earth before I have seen my vengeance.

LADY INGER. Then is there a long life before you. What would you do?

OLAF SKAKTAVL. Do? How should I know what I will do? It has never been my part to plot and plan. That is where you must help me. You have the wit for that. I have but my sword and my two arms.

LADY INGER. Your sword is rusted, Olaf Skaktavl! All the swords in Norway are rusted.

OLAF SKAKTAVL. That is doubtless why some folk fight only with their tongues.--Inger Gyldenlove--great is the change in you. Time was when the heart of a man beat in your breast.

LADY INGER. Put me not in mind of what was.

OLAF SKAKTAVL. 'Tis for that alone I am here. You shall hear me, even if----

LADY INGER. Be it so then; but be brief; for--I must say it-- this is no place of safety for you.

OLAF SKAKTAVL. Ostrat is no place of safety for an outlaw? That I have long known. But you forget that an outlaw is unsafe wheresoever he may wander.

LADY INGER. Speak then; I will not hinder you.

OLAF SKAKTAVL. It is nigh on thirty years now since first I saw you. It was at Akershus* in the house of Knut Alfson and his wife. You were scarce more than a child then; yet you were bold as the soaring falcon, and wild and headstrong too at times. Many were the wooers around you. I too held you dear--dear as no woman before or since. But you cared for nothing, thought of nothing, save your country's evil case and its great need.

* Pronounce Ahkers-hoos.

LADY INGER. I counted but fifteen summers then--remember that. And was it not as though a frenzy had seized us all in those days?

OLAF SKAKTAVL. Call it what you will; but one thing I know--even the old and sober men among us doubted not that it was written in the counsels of the Lord that you were she who should break our thraldom and win us