"Het is een wonder" finished the evening in ninth place of the 20 entries.

As the evening finished, members called out, "See you next week."

With his two evenings of performance finished, Mr. Heaney felt some relief, though he called the moment "a spacewalk."

"I felt that the evening could not finish like that, with the shouts of the audience, the curtain falling into darkness and silence," he later explained.

The next evening I shook hands with everyone I could, finished my wine, and retired to my chamber.

The evenings would usually finish on the terrace for a few quiet drinks with new found friends and then off to bed.

The evening might have finished much earlier if he had read, say, 25 or 30.

The evening finished with Mr. Albright, a mainstay on soft-jazz radio.

He has made three cars in all now, and just before evening finished a trailer one of the cars can draw.

Maybe Elaine would remember to whom she'd talked that night, even though she'd been quite blotto when the evening finished.