's
sorrow;... once more he heard his laughing denunciation;... again there
looked back at him the wounded eyes... Whenever this vision rose before
him, he stirred in his chair and turned his face from the light.

"May heaven grant that she is not remembering it!" he would murmur. And
for a while he would see her as he had left her in the garden, holding
herself so bravely erect in her shining robes, her white cheeks mocking
at her smiling lips. A great well of pity would spring in his breast,
drowning his heart with its pent-up gushing, and the waters would rise,
rise, until they had touched his eyes. But always before they brimmed
over, another change would come. Slowly, the rigid figure before him
would relax into an attitude of idle grace, the white cheeks would
regain their color, the eyes their brightness, and--presto! she stood
before him as he had seen her from the passage, a high-born maid among
her kind, favored by the King, guarded by her lover. When he reached
this point, he always rose with an abruptness that swept his goblet to
the floor and awakened the sleeping dogs.

"Fool!" he would spurn himself. "Mad puffed-up fool! Keep in mind that
she has her consolers, while you have only your wound. If she could
stake her all upon the son of Lodbrok and then give him up at the turn
of the wheel, is it in any way likely that she is dead with tears for
you? What? It may easily be that she has had a new love for every month
that has passed."

As the winter wore on, he grew restless in his solitude, restless and
sullen as the waters of the little stream in their prison of ice. He
told himself that when the spring came he would feel more settled; but
when on one of his morning rides he came upon the first crocus,
lifting its golden cup toward the sun, it only gave to his pointless
restlessness a poisoned barb. Involuntarily his first thought was,
"It would look like a spark of fire in the dusk of her hair." When he
realized what he had said, he planted the great fore-foot of his horse
squarely on the innocent thing and crushed it back into the earth; but
it had done its work, for after that he knew that neither the promise
of the springtime nor the fullness of the harvest would bring him any
pleasure, since his eyes must see them alone.

"The next time they sing the 'Romance of King Offa,' before me, I
will not hold back my sympathy," he scorned himself, "for at last I
understand how it is possible for an elf to l