Free In the Wilderness by Sigrid Undset

meant to greet him or not!
    The next day he took his station outside the church door at the time folk began to come to vespers. She came, with her usual company; Olav bowed—but she made as though she did not see him and went in. Then he was angry and ashamed and would not look over to where she was; he tried to join in the singing and not think of other things. But presently he felt that
she
was looking at him—and as he met the glance of her great dark eyes, she smiled, a bright and gentle smile that was like sunshine.
    And after that they exchanged glances and smiles as though they had been old acquaintances, though they had never said a word to each other, and Olav did not know so much as her name.
    • • •
    Olav never thought that his shipmates must have remarked the change that had come over him. He was not himself aware that he had put a distance between him and the two seamen. Until now they had lived together as companions and equals; that Olav was the master of Hestviken, and Tomas a minstrel in Oslo in wintertime, while Leif was the son of a widow who served in the house of the armourer—this difference was so familiar and obvious that it concerned them no more than that Olav was fair and middle-aged, while Tomas was old and grey, and Leif a boy, red-haired and freckled. But now Olav moved among them without being aware that he scarce noticed them—as the young son of a lord instinctively and without premeditation puts off his childhood’s familiarity with the serving-men of the manor from the day he first divines the path that lies before him and feels that he is destined for another lot than theirs.
    Each time Olav was going into the town he put on his long kirtle; he shaved himself regularly and one evening he went to a haircutter. But the others made as though they did not see such things, and Olav never thought whether they saw it or not. He was not himself aware that he had become as it were another man and was acting more as became a lad of twenty than a landowner of wellnigh two-score years.
    Torodd and Galfrid had returned to London and it could not be very long before they would be ready for the homeward voyage. Olav thought of it with a twinge of reluctance; he did not feel that he was ready to leave England, and his vague thoughts of letting them go home without him stirred within him. The idea he favoured most was that of entering an order, the Maturines for choice, and setting out for the lands of the paynims.—But he was not yet ready for that. Just at this time it was as though he had grown deaf and dumb to the voice that had spoken so powerfully to him—but that should not be for long. Only there was something else that he must think out first—he was not very clear about it. But he had already known as it were a foretaste of the peace that results when a man has surrendered himself to God. So he knew that he would make that surrender in the end.
    Two young Englishmen had bespoken a passage in the
Reindeer—
they wished to make a pilgrimage to St. Olav in Nidaros.They were good seamen both of them; so the Richardsons had no need of him as a shipman.
    And now the summer was already far spent.
    Three weeks had gone by since he saw the strange woman for the first time. One evening she did not come to evensong. As Olav left the church after the service, someone caught him by the mantle. He turned round—it was her servant, the old woman in the hooded cloak. She said something—he did not understand a word. And yet he knew. He nodded silently and followed the old nurse.
    Olav had never been outside Ludgate before. He remembered as he crossed the drawbridge that in an hour the curfew bell would ring, and then they closed the gates, and he wore no armour under his kirtle and no other weapon than the little sword he had hidden in its folds. But even these thoughts were not able to raise their heads above the frenzy that flooded his soul.
    Here under the western wall ran a little stream that