his arms.

XVIII

There were many things about her marriage with Thorstan which she did
not understand at the time--Thorstan's urgency for it was one, a kind
of feverish haste about getting through with preliminaries; and another
was his opposition to living anywhere but at Brattalithe. He would not
go to her father's house, nor to that which had been Thore's, and which
was now hers for life. He put a reeve in each of them and took her to
Brattalithe. Afterwards she understood everything, and was confounded
by her former blindness; but it is the truth that Thorstan's love for
her was of a sort to forbid thinking. She was carried off her feet and
out of her common sense by his passion. He, so dumb and still a man,
was by the touch of passion set on fire. And fire caught fire. The
pair of them lived in each other, and the world seemed empty of all
other men and women.

As for Thorstan himself, knowing what he knew, it is not wonderful that
his love burned at white heat. Passion with him was in a trap and
fighting for an hour of life. What is wonderful is, that he never
betrayed in any other way that he had the end in sight from the
beginning. It was "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" with
him. But Gudrid did not see it. She was too happy to see it. Her
doom was flooded out by sunlight, as it were.

He made songs for her from the time of Thore's death onwards, and in
these his secret might have been revealed if she had been able to read
below the surface. He sang her one night as she lay in his arms the
terrible Song of Helgi and Sigrun. Certainly Death and Love embrace in
that.

Helgi was a Wolfing, the son of Sigmund and Borghild. He was forecast
a hero by the Norns, and at fifteen slew Hunding, who had slain his
father. The sons of Hunding gathered themselves--Alf and Eywolf,
Hiorward and Haward--and the hosts met in the plain under Lowfell.
There was war in heaven while those armies made it on earth. Out of
the lightning flare came the Valkyrs, daughters of Odin, choosers of
the slain. They rode grey horses; they wore helms and coats of mail;
their spear-heads gleamed like fire. Helgi sat by the Eagle Rock and
cried out to them to stay. And one--it was Hogni's daughter,
Sigrun--turned him her fire-hued face and answered: "Other business
have we in hand than to pledge you in horns. My father has plight me
to King Hodbrord, whom I hold no better than the son of a cat. Yet he