Nora's brows contracted. In a rapid mental review she passed over everything she had ever written home, and reconsidered it in the light of Miles's possible judgment. Frau von Seleneck gave dinners. There were never more than four simple courses, whose creation, she proudly admitted, was owed almost entirely to her own skill. The orderly waited at table, and it was a standing joke that somebody's dress or uniform had to pay for his too eager attentions. Nora remembered having written home that she had enjoyed herself immensely, and she had written in perfect truth. She had happened to like the people on that particular occasion, and above all things Wolff himself had been there. This wonderful fact of Wolff's presence was indeed sufficient to colour the most dismal entertainment in Nora's opinion; but in Miles's opinion, she felt with painful certainty, it would have less than no effect. He did not love Wolff as she did, and without love her "brilliant life" might, after all, be more correctly viewed as a hard if cheerful struggle against necessity.
"There is always something going on," she said at length; "but you must not expect anything too wonderful, dear. People in Germany live much more simply than we—than in England, you know. And—we are not rich." She made the last confession with an effort—not in the least because she was ashamed, but because—Nora herself could have given no explanation.
Miles laughed.
"I don't expect you live in a loft," he said.
Nora thought of their little fourth-floor flat and laughed too—also with an effort for which there was no possible reason.
The droschke pulled up with a grind against the curbstone, and a gruff voice informed them that they had arrived at their destination. Miles jumped out and looked about him doubtfully.
"What a poky street!" he said, rather as though he thought the coachman must have made a mistake. "Is this really your house?"
"Our flat is here," Nora said. "We—we like it because it is so quiet."
And then she was ashamed of herself, because she knew that she had not been honest.
Miles showing no intention of paying the coachman, she paid him herself out of her own slender purse, and they began the ascent of the narrow stone steps which led to the heights of their étage. She knew that Miles was rapidly becoming more puzzled, but she made no attempt to elucidate matters—indeed, could not have done so. Never before had she found the stairs so endless, so barren, so ugly. The chill atmosphere, which yet succeeded in being stuffy, seemed to penetrate into every corner of her heart and weight it down with a leaden depression. She did not look at Miles when they stood crowded together on the narrow landing, nor when her little maid-of-all-work, Anna, opened the door and grinned a more than usually friendly welcome. She led the way into the so-called drawing-room and switched on the electric light—their one luxury—half-hoping that some miracle might have mercifully worked among the plush chairs and covered them with a much-needed elegance. But they stood as they had always stood, in spite of the most careful arranging in the world—stiff and tasteless as though they had come out of the front window of a cheap furniture shop—which, in point of fact, they had—and would not forget that they were "reduced goods." Nora had a kind of whimsical affection for them—they were so hopelessly atrocious that it would have been uncharitable to criticise; but to-night something like hatred welled up in her heart against their well-meaning ugliness. She had felt much the same when Frau von Seleneck had first visited her, but that lady had burst into such unfeigned raptures that the feeling had passed. But Miles said nothing, and his silence was, if exclamatory, not rapturous.