“Did you go? Did you ever go?” he asked in the softest tones he could produce. But for a few minutes she was too much frightened even to speak, except for a muttered, “No, no, no,” as she shook and shivered. When at last by patient gentleness he had mastered her fear, he extracted from her, little by little, the avowal that she had met Ben Hassan one day outside the door of the house where he lived as she was returning home from her marketing, and that he had persuaded her to go up stairs and see some diamonds he had just received. At the door, however, Nouna declared that she had been frightened by hearing another man’s voice inside, and had refused to go in, and that Ben Hassan had brought out some earrings to show her, and had declared that if she would like to take a pair he would be satisfied with only a small payment to start with, and she could pay off the rest in instalments at her convenience. “But I was frightened, and would not, and I tossed his hand up with the diamonds, and they fell on the floor and on the stairs, and I ran down and left him, and have never seen him since until this evening,” finished Nouna, hurrying to the end of her confession. “And I know it was wrong to go up, but I didn’t go in. And now I have done all I could by telling you everything. And you can take the earrings back if you like, only don’t be angry with me, because I can’t bear it.” She burst out crying hysterically, and it was some time before she was calm enough for her husband to be able to ask her one more question. Did she know the voice of the man she heard talking inside the bazaar? At first she professed she did not, but presently she acknowledged, when asked whether it was like the voice of Rahas, that she thought it was. Then George was very sweet to her, and said she mustn’t trouble herself any more about the matter, that she was a very good dear girl to tell him everything, and that it would have been better still if she had told him at first; that she must give up the earrings, as it was evident the man was a treacherous beast who might get them into trouble. He added that she was tired, and must go to bed, and fall asleep as fast as she could, and dream of the real jewels she should have some day if she continued to be the sweet and good little wife she now was. And so, amidst tears from the wife and consoling kisses, the little shining ear-studs were taken out, and George having become by this time a promising lady’s maid, brushed out her curls for her, and tucked her up in bed, as composedly as if nothing in the world had happened to disturb the calm course of their daily life.