"Yes, of course, but I meant gay—dances and dinners and all that sort of thing. The pater ran into some fellow who had just come back from a trip to Berlin, and he said the officers had no end of a time—were treated like the lords of creation, in fact, especially if they had a bit of a title stuck on to their names. Wolff is a baron, isn’t he?" "Yes," said Nora abruptly. "I thought so. Pater stuck him up a peg to this chap and said he was a count. Barons aren’t much in Germany, though. They’re as common as herrings." "_They_ don’t think so," Nora protested, hot with annoyance. "They think a good deal of it." "Yes—snobs. That’s what this fellow said. However, I don’t mind. The good time is the only thing I care about, and you seem to have that all right by your letters." 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.