Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/369

]

Alas, you were in better case than I; for you had those to whom you could speak about your absent friend.

Say not so. I had only the hapless lover's comfort: that of sorrowfully repeating your name, and crying out: "Libanius, Libanius!"

Ah, whilst you spoke thus to empty air, I spoke to the four walls of my chamber. Most of the day I passed in bed, picturing to myself who was then with you—now this one, now that. "Once it was otherwise," I said to myself,—"then it was I who possessed Julian's ear."

And meanwhile you let me pine away with longing. Look at me. Have I not grown a century older?

Oh, have I not suffered as great a change? You did not recognise me.

This meeting has been to both of us as a bath, from which we go forth healed.

[They embrace and kiss again

And now, beloved friend, now tell me what has brought you hither to-day; for I cannot doubt that you have some special errand.