And you have never confessed to your husband? NORA. Good heavens! What can you be thinking of? _Tell him_, when he has such a loathing of debt! And besides—how painful and humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly self-respect, to know that he owed anything to me! It would utterly upset the relation between us; our beautiful, happy home would never again be what it is. MRS. LINDEN. Will you never tell him? NORA. [_Thoughtfully, half-smiling._] Yes, some time perhaps—many, many years hence, when I’m—not so pretty. You mustn’t laugh at me! Of course I mean when Torvald is not so much in love with me as he is now; when it doesn’t amuse him any longer to see me dancing about, and dressing up and acting. Then it might be well to have something in reserve. [_Breaking off._] Nonsense! nonsense! That time will never come. Now, what do you say to my grand secret, Christina? Am I fit for nothing now? You may believe it has cost me a lot of anxiety. It has been no joke to meet my engagements punctually. You must know, Christina, that in business there are things called instalments, and quarterly interest, that are terribly hard to provide for. So I’ve had to pinch a little here and there, wherever I could. I couldn’t save much out of the housekeeping, for of course Torvald had to live well. And I couldn’t let the children go about badly dressed; all I got for them, I spent on them, the blessed darlings! MRS. LINDEN. Poor Nora! So it had to come out of your own pocket-money. NORA. Yes, of course. After all, the whole thing was my doing. When Torvald gave me money for clothes, and so on, I never spent more than half of it; I always bought the simplest and cheapest things. It’s a mercy that everything suits me so well—Torvald never had any suspicions. But it was often very hard, Christina dear. For it’s nice to be beautifully dressed—now, isn’t it? MRS. LINDEN. Indeed it is. NORA. Well, and besides that, I made money in other ways. Last winter I was so lucky—I got a heap of copying to do. I shut myself up every evening and wrote far into the night. Oh, sometimes I was so tired, so tired. And yet it was splendid to work in that way and earn money. I almost felt as if I was a man. MRS. LINDEN. Then how much have you been able to pay off? NORA. Well, I can’t precisely say. It’s difficult to keep that sort of business clear. I only know that I’ve paid everything I could scrape together. Sometimes I really didn’t know where to turn. [_Smiles._] Then I used to sit here and pretend that a rich old gentleman was in love with me—— MRS. LINDEN. What! What gentleman? NORA.