Papa didn’t give us one penny. It was _I_ that found the money. MRS. LINDEN. You? All that money? NORA. Twelve hundred dollars. Four thousand eight hundred crowns. What do you say to that? MRS. LINDEN. My dear Nora, how did you manage it? Did you win it in the lottery? NORA. [_Contemptuously_] In the lottery? Pooh! Any one could have done _that_! MRS. LINDEN. Then wherever did you get it from? NORA. [_Hums and smiles mysteriously._] H’m; tra-la-la-la! MRS. LINDEN. Of course you couldn’t borrow it. NORA. No? Why not? MRS. LINDEN. Why, a wife can’t borrow without her husband’s consent. NORA. [_Tossing her head._] Oh! when the wife has some idea of business, and knows how to set about things—— MRS. LINDEN. But, Nora, I don’t understand—— NORA. Well, you needn’t. I never said I borrowed the money. There are many ways I may have got it. [_Throws herself back on the sofa._] I may have got it from some admirer. When one is so—attractive as I am—— MRS. LINDEN. You’re too silly, Nora. NORA. Now I’m sure you’re dying of curiosity, Christina—— MRS. LINDEN. Listen to me, Nora dear: haven’t you been a little rash? NORA. [_Sitting upright again._] Is it rash to save one’s husband’s life? MRS. LINDEN. I think it was rash of you, without his knowledge—— NORA. But it would have been fatal for him to know! Can’t you understand that? He wasn’t even to suspect how ill he was. The doctors came to me privately and told me his life was in danger—that nothing could save him but a winter in the South. Do you think I didn’t try diplomacy first? I told him how I longed to have a trip abroad, like other young wives; I wept and prayed; I said he ought to think of my condition, and not to thwart me; and then I hinted that he could borrow the money. But then, Christina, he got almost angry. He said I was frivolous, and that it was his duty as a husband not to yield to my whims and fancies—so he called them. Very well, thought I, but saved you must be; and then I found the way to do it. MRS. LINDEN. And did your husband never learn from your father that the money was not from him? NORA. No; never. Papa died at that very time. I meant to have told him all about it, and begged him to say nothing. But he was so ill—unhappily, it wasn’t necessary. MRS. LINDEN.