She rose, walked restlessly about the studio, longing for Jimmie to come and exorcise the devils that possessed her. A little sharp cry of distress escaped her lips. The place echoed like a vault, and she felt awfully alone. In her nervous tension she could bear it no longer. She went up the stairs again into the bare hall. On the pegs hung two or three discoloured hats and an old coat. Scarce knowing whither she went, she entered the dining-room. Luncheon had been laid. A freak of destiny had reproduced the meal of which Morland had spoken at Wiltshire House and of which last night had revived the memory: a scrag end of cold boiled mutton, blackened and shapeless, with the hard suet round about it; a dried-up heel of yellow American cheese; the half of a cottage loaf. The table-cloth--it was Friday--was stained with a week's meals. It was coarse in texture, old and thin and darned. The enamel on the plates was cracked, the hundred tiny fissures showing up dark brown. The plate on the forks had worn off in places, disclosing the yellowish metal beneath. The tumblers were thick and common, of glass scarcely transparent. She stared helplessly at the table. Never in her life had she seen such preparations for a meal. To the woman always daintily fed, daintily environed, it seemed squalor unspeakable. She shrank back into the hall, pressed her hands to her eyes, looked round, as if to search for some refuge. The stairs met her eye. She had never seen what lay above the ground floor--except once, on the memorable evening when Aline had fainted. Suddenly madness seized her--an insane craving to spy out the whole nakedness of the house. The worn stair-carpet ended at the first landing. Then bare boards. The door of the bathroom was wide open. She peeked in. The ceiling was blackened with gas; the bath cracked and stained; the appointments as bare as those in a workhouse. Her glance fell upon a battered tin dish holding an uncompromising cube of yellow soap with hard sharp edges. She withdrew her head and shut the door hurriedly. Another door stood ajar. She pushed it open and entered. It was the front bedroom--inhabited by Jimmie. The thought that it would be her own, which a fortnight before might have clothed her in delicious confusion, chilled her to the bone. Bare boards again; a strip of oil-cloth by the narrow cheap iron bedstead; a painted deal table with a little mirror and the humblest of toilette equipments laid upon it; a painted deal chest of drawers with white handles; a painted deal wash-stand; a great triangular bit broken out of the mouth of the ewer.