t I
am false as the sea-foam. Mayhap I am; but if I be, it is women
who have made me so. Had I sooner found what I sought,--had I met
a woman proud and noble and high-souled even as you, then had my
path been different indeed. At this moment, maybe, I had been
standing at your side as the champion of all that suffer wrong
in Norway's land. For _this_ I believe: a woman is the mightiest
power in the world, and in her hand it lies to guide a man whither
God Almighty would have him go.

ELINA (to herself). Can it be as he says? Nay nay; there is
falsehood in his eyes and deceit on his lips. And yet--no song
is sweeter than his words.

NILS LYKKE (coming closer, speaks low and more intimately). How
often, when you have been sitting here at Ostrat, alone with your
changeful thoughts, have you felt your bosom stifling; how often
have the roof and walls seemed to shrink together till they crushed
your very soul. Then have your longings taken wing with you; then
have you yearned to fly far from here, you knew not whither.--How
often have you not wandered alone by the fiord; far out a ship
has sailed by in fair array, with knights and ladies on her deck
with song and music of stringed instruments;--a faint, far-off
rumour of great events has reached your ears;--and you have felt
a longing in your breast, an unconquerable craving to know all
that lies beyond the sea. But you have not understood what ailed
you. At times you have thought it was the fate of your fatherland
that filled you with all these restless broodings. You deceived
yourself;--a maiden so young as you has other food for musing----
---- Elina Gyldenlove! Have you never had visions of an unknown
power--a strong mysterious might, that binds together the destinies
of mortals? When you dreamed of knightly jousts and joyous
festivals--saw you never in your dreams a knight, who stood in
the midst of the gayest rout, with a smile on his lips and with
bitterness in his heart,--a knight that had once dreamed a dream
as fair as yours, of a woman noble and stately, for whom he went
ever seeking, and in vain?

ELINA. Who are you, that have power to clothe my most secret
thought in words? How can you tell me what I have borne in my
inmost soul--and knew it not myself? How know you----?

NILS LYKKE. All that I have told you, I have read in your eyes.

ELINA. Never has any man spoken to me as you have. I have
understood you but dimly; and y