“What’s this?” asked George, running his eyes over it and reading aloud at random. “‘One pair of pink garters with silver clasps, and with a little knob come off the clasp of one!’” He turned to the next page and read: “‘Two fans with pearl handles and one with tortoiseshell which I have never used. Except once’” was screwed into the space above as an afterthought. George picked out another item. “‘A hand-mirror that makes you look pretty, as if you had a crown on, for the top is a silver coronet.’” Further on the entries grew fuller and more eloquent, as if the very description of the beauty of her treasures had become a labour of love. “‘Two lovely embroidered dresses, one pale blue silk, all over little silver birds with their little wings spread out as if they were flying in the sky. The other is pink with white roses and lilies, very nearly as pretty as the other one, and besides it is less worn.’” Even her velvet slippers, each pair described with loving minuteness, were faithfully put down. “They are all there; I haven’t kept back anything, indeed,” explained Nouna in great haste, as George, after reading some _naïve_ entries in silence, turned his back upon her, a proceeding which seemed to her ominous. “I’ve only kept just the things I had before we came here.” But then he put his arms round her quite suddenly, and held her close to him as he said: “And who do you think will be able to get into those little doll’s garments of yours if you leave them behind? The frocks might do for babies’ gowns, certainly, and the red velvet slippers might be hung upside down for watch-pockets, but they will never find grown-up people small enough to wear them, my word for it!” Nouna twisted her left shoulder up to her uneasily, and a little haughtily; she had considered the drawing up of this list as a very business-like proceeding, and now she was being laughed at for it. Her husband saw this in time to kiss away the gathering frown. His own taste would have preferred the sacrifice of the dainty though now most inappropriate wardrobe; but he knew that during long hours of the day he should have to be away from his wife, and as experience had taught him that she could find more entertainment in an embroidered sash than in the whole literature of the English language, and that moreover her moral qualities could shine out strongly upon occasion in spite of this unorthodox taste, he decided that she should have the solace in exile of all her private treasures except the jewels, which he intended to despatch to Chloris White at the moment of leaving England. “You think I mind giving these things up!” Nouna said superbly. “But I am not a child; they are nothing to me.” Nevertheless, when her husband told her he would help her to pack them up, as they were of no use to any one but her, she leapt about the room for joy, and rushed off to take advantage of the permission in a state of frantic excitement.