My wife was better than all women, and yet I
could not feel it.'
"`And so,' I said with sympathy, `you walked straight out of the front door,
like a masculine Nora.'
"`Nora?' he inquired politely, apparently supposing it to be a Russian word.
"`I mean Nora in "The Doll's House,"' I replied.
"At this he looked very much astonished, and I knew he was an Englishman;
for Englishmen always think that Russians study nothing but `ukases.'
"`"The Doll's House"?' he cried vehemently; `why, that is just where Ibsen
was so wrong! Why, the whole aim of a house is to be a doll's house.
Don't you remember, when you were a child, how those little windows
WERE windows, while the big windows weren't. A child has a doll's house,
and shrieks when a front door opens inwards. A banker has a real house,
yet how numerous are the bankers who fail to emit the faintest shriek
when their real front doors open inwards.'
"Something from the folk-lore of my infancy still kept me foolishly silent;
and before I could speak, the Englishman had leaned over and was saying
in a sort of loud whisper, `I have found out how to make a big thing small.
I have found out how to turn a house into a doll's house.
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