Nora turned to him. She was ashamed of her shame, but with all the will in the world she could only meet his wide-open stare with a sort of defiance which betrayed that she knew already what he was thinking, that she had even foreseen it.
"This is the drawing-room," she said lamely. "We don't often use it, though. It is not as—comfortable as the others."
"I should hope not," he said. He was looking around him with such real and blank astonishment that poor Nora could have laughed if the tears of bitter humiliation had not been so near the surface. Bravely, and with the recklessness of one who feels that the worst is over and nothing else matters, she pushed open the folding-doors.
"The dining-room," she said, as though she were introducing a poor relation of whom she was trying not to be ashamed.
Miles inspected the imitation mahogany table and chairs with his eyebrows still at an elevated angle, but now less with surprise as with a supercilious disgust.
"Is this where you have your dinner parties?" he asked.
Nora heard and understood the irony, and it gave her back her nerve and pride.
"Yes," she said. "We do not have them often, because we cannot afford them. When we do we only have our best friends, and they find the room big enough and good enough."
Miles made no further observation, though his silence was a work of art in unexpressed things, and Nora led him to their little Fremdenzimmer. She had prepared it with the greatest care. There was a jar of flowers on the dressing-table, and everything smelt of freshness and cleanliness, but she had not been able to stretch its dimensions, and it was with unanswerable justice that Miles inquired where he was expected to keep his things.
"You can keep one of your boxes under the bed," Nora said in some confusion. "The others are being put in the corridor. I'm afraid you'll have to go outside when you want anything. I am very sorry, dear."