After a silence of some duration, poor Balder renewed his attack from another quarter.
"What would you think of one who put to death a creature you loved?"
She smiled, and shook her glowing pendants.
"Only God puts to death; and no one would hurt a thing I love!"
"What should you think of one who put to death a man?"
Gnulemah looked for a moment perplexed and indignant. Then, to Balder's great discomfiture, she laughed like a bird-chorus.
"Why do you imagine what cannot be? Would you and Hiero kill each other? The gray owl kills little mice, but that is to eat them. Would you eat Hiero--"
"Don't laugh, Gnulemah!" besought he. "I should kill him, not as animals kill one another, but from rage and hatred."
"Hatred!" repeated Gnulemah, dislikingly; "hatred,--what is it?"
"A passion of men's hearts,--the wish that evil may befall others. When the hatred is bitter enough, and the opportunity fair, they kill!"
Gnulemah shuddered slightly and looked sad. Then she leaned towards Balder and touched his shoulder persuasively.
"Never think of such things, or talk of them! Could you hate anyone, Balder? or kill him if you did?"
With that glorious presence so near him,--her voice so close to his ear,--how could he answer her? His heart awoke, and beat and drove the tingling blood tumultuously forth to the remotest veins. She saw the flush, and caught the passionate brilliancy of his eyes. Happy and afraid, she drew back, saying in haste,-"You have not told me yet about the ring!"
That was not wisely said! Balder checked himself with a sudden, strong hand, and held still,--his brows lowered down and his lips settled together,--until his pulses were quiet and his cheeks once more pale.
"I will tell you," he said; "but to understand, you must first hear some other things." He hesitated, face to face with an analysis of murder. The position was at once stimulating and appalling. To dissect and reduce to its elements that grisly murder-devil which had once possessed his own soul, and whose writhings beneath the scalpel he would therefore feel as his own--here loomed a prospect large and terrible! Nevertheless, Balder took up the knife.
The white petal of an apple-blossom, part from its calyx, came floating earthwards; but a breeze caught it and wafted it aloft. It sank again, and was again arrested and borne skywards. Finally is disappeared over the cliff-edge.
"The weight that made it fall is of the earth," said Balder (both he and Gnulemah had been watching the petal's course). "The breeze that buoyed it up was from heaven, and so it is with man. Were there no heavenly support, he would fall at once, but whether or not, he always tends to fall."