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. 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.