Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 3).djvu/87



[Nodding slowly.]

To strew it.

Strew it! If you do, It is my soul that you will strew!

And if I do it, even so? If I one evening vigil keep With lighted taper by your bed, While you with clasped Psalter sleep The first night's slumber of the dead,— If I then fumble round about, Draw treasure after treasure out, Take up the taper, hold it low—?

[Approaching excitedly.]

Whence comes this fancy?

Would you know?

Ay.

From a childish scene that still Lives in my mind, and ever will, That seams my soul with foul device Like an infestering cicatrice. It was an autumn evening. Dead Was father; you lay sick in bed. I stole where he was laid by night, All pallid in the silver light.