uring for----

ELINA (comes in again through the door on the left; looks round
her, and says with suppressed emotion). Are you alone, Biorn?

BIORN. Is it you, Mistress Elina?

ELINA. Come, Biorn, tell me one of your stories; I know you
have more to tell than those that----

BIORN. A story? Now--so late in the evening----?

ELINA. If you count from the time when it grew dark at Ostrat,
it is late indeed.

BIORN. What ails you? Has aught crossed you? You seem so
restless.

ELINA. May be so.

BIORN. There is something the matter. I have hardly known you
this half year past.

ELINA. Bethink you: this half year past my dearest sister Lucia
has been sleeping in the vault below.

BIORN. That is not all, Mistress Elina--it is not that alone
that makes you now thoughtful and white and silent, now restless
and ill at ease, as you are to-night.

ELINA. You think so? And wherefore not? Was she not gentle
and pure and fair as a summer night? Biorn, I tell you, Lucia was
dear to me as my life. Have you forgotten how many a time, as
children, we sat on your knee in the winter evenings? You sang
songs to us, and told us tales----

BIORN. Ay, then your were blithe and gay.

ELINA. Ah, then, Biorn! Then I lived a glorious life in the
fable-land of my own imaginings. Can it be that the sea-strand
was naked then as now? If it were so, I did not know it. It was
there I loved to go, weaving all my fair romances; my heroes came
from afar and sailed again across the sea; I lived in their midst,
and set forth with them when they sailed away. (Sinks on a chair.)
Now I feel so faint and weary; I can live no longer in my tales.
They are only--tales. (Rises hastily.) Biorn, do you know what
has made me sick? A truth; a hateful, hateful truth, that gnaws
me day and night.

BIORN. What mean you?

ELINA. Do you remember how sometimes you would give us good
counsel and wise saws? Sister Lucia followed them; but I--ah,
well-a-day!

BIORN (consoling her). Well, well----!

ELINA. I know it--I was proud and self-centred! In all our
games, I would still be the Queen, because I was the tallest, the
fairest, the wisest! I know it!

BIORN. That is true.

ELINA. Once you took me by the hand and looked earnestly at me,
and said: "Be not proud of your fairness, or your wisdom; but be
proud as the mountain eagle as often as you think: I am Inger
Gyldenlove's