Arngrim (rising). Now I am so drunk that I can enjoy listening to the bleating of the sheep. By the way, washing with lukewarm milk is good for freckles. [Exit.

Halla. Thanks! (To Gudfinna.) You may go now, if you like. You have been here with the luggage long enough. [Exit Gudfinna. (Halla and Kari stand silent until Gudfinna has disappeared. Then Kari draws her to him and kisses her.)

Halla. I would rather wait for you here than meet you at the fold. I was so frightened! I thought you had gone and would never come back. (Takes his hand and looks at him in loving wonder.) Where do you get your courage? I can't understand that you have not fled long ago.

Kari. I will tell you where I get my courage. (Kisses her.) I don't know how the days can be so gloriously long. It seems to me that I have lived more than the age of man since the first time you kissed me.

Halla. You love me!

Kari (is silent for a moment). I love you.

Halla. You don't know how much that one word promises me. It means the sunshine on the hills. It means the streams and lakes. Shall I tell you something, Kari? Something you don't know?

Kari. What could that be?

Halla. I am not going to say it just now, but I will tell you something else. I care a thousand times more for you now than I did three months why?

Kari. No.

ago. Do you know

Halla. Because you are so brave. You sleep in my arms as calmly as if you had not a foe in the whole country. Kari (smiling). I must have borrowed your courage.

Halla. It is dear to see you smile. Your hair is like a cloud, and when you smile it seems to lift from your forehead.

of

Kari. You must not make me out braver than I am. Part

my courage is recklessness. I close my eyes and let the sun shine on my face.

Halla. Do you never think of the future?

Kari (earnestly). I do.

Halla. I have blamed myself much these last days. I ought to have sent you away long ago, but I could not. I had to be sure that you loved me. Last night I heard the hills calling you, and I called against them with all my soul. If you had never come back, I would have forgiven you, though it had broken my heart. (Exultantly.) And then I saw you coming down the mountain like a god, driving a white snowslide before you!

Kari. Did you think I could have gone without letting you know? I remember once you had fallen asleep in my arms. The night was light. Your eyes were closed, but I could see through your eyelids. I saw a little girl with black hair. (Fondly stroking her hair.)

Halla (taking his right hand). How well I know this hand! (Lays it on her heart.) My heart beats with joy.

Kari. I am like the man in the fairy-tale who fell down into a deep well. He thought he would never again see the sun, but suddenly he stood in a green meadow. There was a tall castle, and the king's daughter came out to meet him. Halla, do you understand? If I had not stolen, we two should never have met.

Halla. That is true.

Kari. The year I lived in the hills, I would sometimes get into such a rage that I wanted to give myself a good

thrashing. Once I really did it-I beat myself with a knotted rope.

Halla. How you must have suffered!

Kari. If anybody had told me in those days that I should ever become a happy man, I would have laughed at him. Then I believed riches and honors meant happiness. I used to dream of riding through the parish where I was born, dressed in fine clothes and with many horses.

Halla (laughing). I did not know you were vain.

Kari. Nor am I any more, but I have grown stingy. The minutes are my gold-pieces. (Takes her hand.) When I hold your hand in mine, I am happy. Before I cared for you, I did not see the sun shining, and now when it rains, all the drops prattle about you.

Halla. You do love me!

Kari. I seem to be in a church. I hold a torch in my hand and light one taper after another. For every taper that is lighted, the church grows larger and more beautiful. But I am a thief. If I am caught I must be buried alive, and now the church-bells are ringing. I hear the crowd gathering outside. Halla. You frighten me.

Kari (taking her face between his hands). I must have a long look at your face. If I were to become blind this moment, I should always remember it. Your soul is in your eyes. When you look at me, I feel an unseen hand fondling my face. Whenever the sun shines, I shall see your eyes. It is hard to tell you, but when the sky grows red to-morrow, I shall be on my way to the hills. I must flee this very night. Halla. I knew it. (Sits down.) Tell me how you have planned your flight.

Kari. I must be off before the winter sets in, and besides the letter from the south may be here any day now.

Halla. I know all that.

Kari (sits down). When I come home to-night, I shall say that I have seen the tracks of a flock of sheep farther up in the hills than we usually go to look for them. I shall ask you for two horses. You won't refuse me them? (Halla shakes her head.) I shall say that I must start at once, this very night, before the tracks disappear. When I don't come back, they will think I have come across outlaws or have met with an accident.

Halla. And where shall you go?

Kari. To the mountain plain where the warm springs are. I lived there before I came to you.

Halla. How long will it take you to reach it?

Kari. Three days. It is about in the middle of the country.

Halla. And there you will build your hut?

Kari. No; last time I lived in a lava cave. I had brought with me some tools that my brother gave me, and I left them there. Something told me that I might need them again. (He is silent.)

Halla (taking his hand). You must tell me more, much more. I want to see the place where you will live (with a strange smile), so that I can come and visit you in my thoughts.

Kari. I forget what I have told you and what I have not told you. You may think that the hills are wild and forbidding, but that is not so at all. In the summer, when the sun is shining, they are beautiful. The glaciers lie like white untrodden land in a sea of sand, their lower rim flashing green and blue in the sunlight. When you come nearer, you see a chain of jagged sandhills like a dark surf, where the glacier and the sand waste meet. (He is silent again.

Halla has picked a flower and is pulling its petals.) Why are you doing that? What are you asking about?

Halla. You love me!

Kari. Do you need to ask a flower about that? (Rising.) Are you not the least bit sorry that we must part?

Halla (rising). Would it make it easier for you, if I were to whine and weep like a child?

Kari. I don't know. (He is silent.) Yet you need not pity me. I am rich—I am king of the hills! The fire on my hearth never dies, day or night. The country is mine, as far as my eyes can reach. Mine are the glaciers that make the streams! When I get angry, they swell, and the stones gnash their teeth against the current. And I own a whole lake with a fleet of ice-ships and a choir of swans. Halla. I never said that I pitied you.

Kari. But one thing you must promise me. You must not marry the bailiff.

Halla. But, dear man

Kari. If you do, I shall come some night and kill you both, first him and then you.

Halla. Are you really jealous of the bailiff? He hates me. Kari. Why should he be hounding me like a wild beast, if it were not for your sake? I have never done him any harm. Halla. I promise you that I shall never marry the bailiff. (Puts her arms around his neck and tries to draw him to her.) Kiss me, Kari!

Kari (gently pushing her away). My name is not Kari. From this day on my name is Eyvind-"Eyvind of the Hills," they call me in the southland, my brother told me.

Halla. From my lips you shall never hear any other name than Kari. By that name I learned to love you. A man who is not loved has no name. (Takes his hands.)