Free In the Wilderness by Sigrid Undset Page B

enough that rich ladies used such perfumes to anoint themselves with, but he disliked it. Although he felt how she clung to him in abandonment, him who for years had not held a woman in his embrace, yet as he stood there with his arms full of her, his senses were cooled by the thought that this was an unknown.
    No, this was not she—and it was as though he heard a cry coming from somewhere without; a voice that he heard not with his bodily ears called to him, aloud and wild with fear, trying to warn him. From somewhere, from the ground under his feet, he thought, the cry came—Ingunn, he knew, the real Ingunn, was striving to come to his aid. He could tell that
she
was in the utmost distress; in bonds of powerlessness or sin she was fighting to be heard by him through the darkness that parted them.
    The woman hung upon him with her arms clasped about his neck and her head buried in his shoulder. Olav was still holding her, listening, as he gazed over her head, feeling his own desire, not quenched, but as it were dissolved in foam, far away from this one. Ingunn called to him, she was afraid he would not understand that this stranger was one who had borrowed her shape, seeking to drag him under.—“No, no, Ingunn, I hear you, I am coming—”
    He strained all his senses to catch clearly this ringing cry of distress which did not reach his bodily ears, even as he did not see with his bodily eyes the form that struggled beneath folds of gloom. Now it grew fainter—
    Olav gently loosened the strange woman’s hands from his neck and drew back from her a little. She followed, and now she looked up—his head swam as he met her timid, gentle, animal look. She was so like that he was sick with desire to kiss the living lips, though he knew it was a stranger who looked at him beseechingly and cravingly from the depths of those eyes that were so terribly like. But he felt as if he must use his utmost force to tear himselfaway from her; it was like the temptation of his worst nights, when he could not help thinking of the fiord—of plunging into its waters and being free of it all.
    “No—Ingunn, I hear you. Help, Mary!”
    As he gave way, she threw herself into his arms, like a wave striking a ship’s bows, and unconsciously he raised himself on his toes as he shook himself free of her. The touch of her long, white hands was the last he felt. He turned and walked quickly away.
    Behind him he heard a low, long-drawn whine—and then cries, howls of scorn and rage. He swung himself over the fence—his kirtle caught in it a moment. “Now they will come after me,” thought Olav; “she will call her servants now—” He ran across the bleaching-field and between some cattle-sheds and reached the palisade. It was twice the height of a man, at least.
    How he got over he did not know, as he stood outside in a little dry field among haystacks—he had a feeling that he had pushed something against the fence, and instantly he seemed to recall having done the same once before—made his escape over a fence.
    “That was that.” He had said it aloud, standing ready to run, as he listened whether any sound came from within the enclosure. He was on a different side of the mansion from that to which the woman had brought him. Olav heard nothing; then he ran straight across the fields, taking the nearest way to cover.
    Passing through the grave, he found a track that led by some mud cabins and down to the marshes about a little river. He did not know exactly where it was—it was down in a valley, but he followed the path along the river, thinking meanwhile that now the gates would be shut, darkness was falling fast. He could not enter the town, and could scarcely reach the
Reindeer
tonight. Well, there was no help for it. He passed his hand over his forehead and noticed that he had lost his hat. Well, well, so be it.— Here was a plank bridge, and when he came up the slope on the other side, he could see the light town walls and the