is eyes gleamed with their
last light. "Good-by. Listen--you know I didn't kiss you then. Breathe
on the dying lamp, and let it go out."

Anna Sergyevna put her lips to his forehead.

"Enough!" he murmured, and dropt back on to the pillow.
"Now--darkness--"

Anna Sergyevna went softly out. "Well?" Vassily Ivanovitch asked her
in a whisper.

"He has fallen asleep," she answered, scarce audibly. Bazarov was not
fated to awaken. Toward evening he sank into complete unconsciousness,
and the following day he died. Father Alexey performed the last rites
of religion over him. When they anointed him with the last unction,
when the holy oil touched his breast, one eye opened; and it seemed as
tho at the sight of the priest in his vestments, the smoking censers,
the light before the image, something like a shudder of horror passed
over the death-stricken face. When at last he had breathed his last,
and there arose a universal lamentation in the house, Vassily
Ivanovitch was seized by a sudden frenzy. "I said I should rebel," he
shrieked hoarsely, with his face inflamed and distorted, shaking his
fist in the air, as tho threatening some one; "and I rebel, I rebel!"
But Arina Vlasyevna, all in tears, hung upon his neck, and both fell
on their faces together. "Side by side," Anfisushka related afterward
in the servants' room, "they drooped their poor heads like lambs at
noonday."

But the heat of noonday passes, and evening comes and night; and then,
too, the return to the kindly refuge, where sleep is sweet for the
weary and heavy-laden.

HENRIK IBSEN

Born in Norway in 1828, died in 1906; studied medicine, but
devoted himself to literature; his first dramatic work
published in 1850; went to the University in Christiania in
1850; for a time edited a weekly paper at Christiania;
became manager of a theater at Bergen in 1852; visited
Germany in 1852; returned to Christiania as director of the
Norwegian Theater in 1857; thereafter wrote plays
continuously; lived in later years first at Dresden and then
at Munich.

THE THOUGHT CHILD[51]

_The action passes in the first half of the Thirteenth Century._
_Present_: Skule; Jatgeir _the Skald_, _an Icelander_; Paul Flida, _a
nobleman_.

[Footnote 51: From the translation of "The Pretenders" by William
Archer.]

JATGEIR [_enters from the back_]--Forgive my coming, lord King.

_King Skule_--You come to my wish, Skal