ongratulating you?

Ellida (taking the flowers). My best thanks. Won't you sit down a
moment, Mr. Lyngstrand? (ELLIDA, ARNHOLM, and LYNGSTRAND sit down in
the arbour.) This--birthday business--was to have been kept secret, Mr.
Arnholm.

Arnholm. So I see. It wasn't for us uninitiated folk!

Ellida (putting down the bouquet). Just so. Not for the uninitiated.

Lyngstrand. 'Pon my word, I won't tell a living soul about it.

Ellida. Oh, it wasn't meant like that. But how are you getting on? I
think you look better than you did.

Lyngstrand. Oh! I think I'm getting on famously. And by next year, if I
can go south--

Ellida. And you are going south, the girls tell me.

Lyngstrand. Yes, for I've a benefactor and friend at Bergen, who looks
after me, and has promised to help me next year.

Ellida. How did you get such a friend?

Lyngstrand. Well, it all happened so very luckily. I once went to sea in
one of his ships.

Ellida. Did you? So you wanted to go to sea?

Lyngstrand. No, not at all. But when mother died, father wouldn't have
me knocking about at home any longer, and so he sent me to sea. Then we
were wrecked in the English Channel on our way home; and that was very
fortunate for me.

Arnholm. What do you mean?

Lyngstrand. Yes, for it was in the shipwreck that I got this little
weakness--of my chest. I was so long in the ice-cold water before
they picked me up; and so I had to give up the sea. Yes, that was very
fortunate.

Arnholm. Indeed! Do you think so?

Lyngstrand. Yes, for the weakness isn't dangerous; and now I can be
a sculptor, as I so dearly want to be. Just think; to model in that
delicious clay, that yields so caressingly to your fingers!

Ellida. And what are you going to model? Is it to be mermen and
mermaids? Or is it to be old Vikings?

Lyngstrand. No, not that. As soon as I can set about it, I am going to
try if I can produce a great work--a group, as they call it.

Ellida. Yes; but what's the group to be?

Lyngstrand. Oh! something I've experienced myself.

Arnholm. Yes, yes; always stick to that.

Ellida. But what's it to be?

Lyngstrand. Well, I thought it should be the young wife of a sailor, who
lies sleeping in strange unrest, and she is dreaming. I fancy I shall do
it so that you will see she is dreaming.

Arnholm. Is there anything else?

Lyngstrand. Yes, there's to be another figure--a sort of apparition, as
they say. It's her husband, to whom she has been fai