It now struck Nora that Tora Holm was the first person who had ever thoroughly understood her: to think that a stranger who looked at her with fresh impartial eyes should have discovered this at once! The more they saw of each other, the more gifted they thought each other. Tora's talent for telling stories was the "greatest" Nora had "ever known;" she gathered all her set round her to listen, and the story-telling began. Fairy tales and romances by turns--what had not Tora read, what did she not remember? The girls would listen over and over again to the "Thousand and One Nights" (not the condensed edition, but the full one) as though they were little children. As well as this, they liked pictures of real life which did not go beyond their comprehension, though they preferred that the lovers (and by inference also themselves) should be noble and unhappy. These girls of fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen (Tora herself was nearly seventeen), for various reasons had, outside their school subjects, read only by stealth, with the results which naturally follow. The books which Rendalen had read to them had greatly widened their horizon and increased their desire to know more, so that Tora was doubly welcome. But between the story-telling times Nora wished to have her to herself, really to possess her; Nora-Tora, Tora-Nora, wove themselves together, no one else could approach them. Nora announced this openly; they two preferred being by themselves. Every one knew Nora, and understood that in a few days it would be over; they only laughed, but there was one who did not laugh. Tinka Hansen could not endure faithlessness; she had taken Nora to task on one or two occasions and warned her. This time she was silent, and allowed the penalty to consist in punctiliously respecting their wish to remain apart. Nora could never get her to come with her. Very soon Nora began to feel lonely among all these delightful Oriental palaces; she did not realise this till she discovered that without Tinka she did not feel free to do as she liked; without her she dared not always listen. Tora's romances were often very "French." For more than a year Nora had been used to the limits which Tinka imposed. She was not sure if she were now inside or outside them, and an uneasy conscience was the result. Tora had to suffer for this; Nora did not know what they ought to do; she peremptorily cut short a story which had been begun, ordered another, but stopped that as well; made promises and did not keep them, and felt bored. And it was just at the beginning of this period that Milla returned to school.