"Even if she does admire the furniture, and think the flat perfection, she has a good, kind heart," Nora thought. "I am glad we are going to be friends." She began to hum to herself, and when in an unusually untidy corner she found a pair of Wolff’s _dritte Garnitur_ gloves, she picked them up and kissed them. There was so much sunlight and love in her heart that smells and stuffiness and ugly furniture were forgotten, and she triumphed in the knowledge that she was, without exception, the happiest woman in the world. *CHAPTER II* *—AND THE NEW LIFE* Nora sank with a triumphant sigh into her favourite arm-chair by the window. The much-dreaded visit to the Mayos was an accomplished fact, the day’s household work at an end, and for a breathing-space she was at liberty to enjoy the luxury of an unobserved idleness. Dusk had set in, and dusk is the time of memories and dreams. And this evening Nora recalled the near past. She could not have explained why of late her thoughts reverted so constantly to the glowing period which had stood, as it were, beyond the first entry of her marriage and divided it from the dull grey of everyday life. The glorious month in the Black Forest, the visit to Karlsburg, the princely reception by her husband’s old regiment, the military serenades, the military visits, the endless flood of bouquets from _Kameraden_ the wild enthusiasm of poor little Fräulein Müller, who felt as though "it were my own wedding-day, you know, _liebes Kind_," and behaved as though such were really the case, the happy hours with Hildegarde and her mother—all this awoke in Nora’s memory like some brilliant, intoxicating dream in whose reality she could scarcely believe. Then had come the house-hunting—or, rather, flat-hunting in the stifling heat of a Berlin July, and at last this—the slow settling down to her new life.