"To love!" answered Sigurd promptly. "To see a beautiful elf with golden wings come fluttering, fluttering gently down from the sky,--you open your arms to catch her--so! . . . and just as you think you have her, she leans only a little bit on one side, and falls, not into your heart--no!--into the heart of some one else! That is grief, because, when she has gone, no more elves come down from the sky,--for you, at any rate,--good things may come for others,--but for you the heavens are empty!"
Lorimer was silent, looking at the speaker curiously.
"How do you get all this nonsense into your head, eh?" he inquired kindly.
"I do not know," replied Sigurd with a sigh. "It comes! But, tell me,"--and he smiled wistfully--"it is true, dear friend--good friend--it is all true, is it not? For you the heavens are empty? You know it!"
Lorimer flushed hotly, and then grew strangely pale. After a pause, he said in his usual indolent way-"Look here, Sigurd; you're romantic! I'm not. I know nothing about elves or empty heavens. I'm all right! Don't you bother yourself about me."
The dwarf studied his face attentively, and a smile of almost fiendish cunning suddenly illumined his thin features. He laid his weak-looking white hand on the young man's arm and said in a lower tone-"I will tell you what to do. Kill him!"
The last two words were uttered with such intensity of meaning that Lorimer positively recoiled from the accents, and the terrible look which accompanied them.
"I say, Sigurd, this won't do," he remonstrated gravely. "You mustn't talk about killing, you know! It's not good for you. People don't kill each other nowadays so easily as you seem to think. It can't be done, Sigurd! Nobody wants to do it."
"It can be done!" reiterated the dwarf imperatively. "It must be done, and either you or I will do it! He shall not rob us,--he shall not steal the treasure of the golden midnight. He shall not gather the rose of all roses--"
"Stop!" said Lorimer suddenly. "Who are you talking about?"
"Who!" cried Sigurd excitedly. "Surely you know. Of him--that tall, proud, grey-eyed Englishman,--your foe, your rival; the rich, cruel Errington. . . ."
Lorimer's hand fell heavily on his shoulder, and his voice was very stern.
"What nonsense, Sigurd! You don't know what you are talking about to-day. Errington my foe! Good heavens! Why, he's my best friend! Do you hear?"