"So far, so good," Millicent said when she was alone. "What a weird mystic I've attached myself to!" She alluded to Michael, not to the Moslem saint.
Her camp-outfit was so complete that in her desert bedroom there was scarcely an item missing which could ensure her comfort. She contemplated going to bed with enjoyment. Where money is, there also are the fleshpots of Egypt, even if it is in the waterless tracts of the Arabian desert.
Material comforts meant very much to Millicent. She enjoyed using all the little accessories belonging to a fastidious woman's toilet; she enjoyed, too, the occupation of expending care on her person. Her rising up and lying down were ceremonies which she performed with unremitting attention. In her tent in the desert her perfumes and cosmetics and bath-salts afforded her a curious satisfaction. They told her that her management had been perfect; they appealed to her barbaric love of contrasts. It fed her pride very pleasantly to know that she could command these luxuries; to know that by her own wealth she could bring the trivialities of civilization into the elemental life of the desert excited her senses.
Her natural beauty could have triumphed over the ravages made by the sun and the dry desert air. She was one of those fortunate women who needed few, if any, of the absurdities which she carried about with her wheresoever she went. To have done without them would have been to deprive herself of a very genuine pleasure, to have starved one of her eager appetites. Margaret's rapid tub, the swift brushing and combing and plaiting of her dark hair, generally while she read some passage from a book which interested her, and her total disregard for cosmetics, would have horrified Millicent if she had known of her habits. The height of civilization to Millicent was expressed in a luxuriously-appointed dressing-table and in an excessive care of her body. Progress touched its high-water mark in the perfection of her creature comforts. Taken from this standpoint, progress could scarcely go any further, or so Michael would have thought if he had watched her ritual of going to bed.
She dawdled pleasantly through it, enjoying every moment of the time, appreciating the handling of artistically-designed silver objects, performing with care the washing of her face with oatmeal and the dusting of her fair skin with the latest luxury in powder. She liked to take the same care of her person as a young mother takes of her first baby, and—as she expressed it—to smell like one when the ceremony was finished.
Her love of contrasts appealed to her, when she stood, all ready for bed in her foolish nightgown—a mere veil of chiffon—becomingly guarded by a Japanese kimono of the softest silk. She visualized the timeless desert outside her tent, the trackless ocean of silence, the uninhabited primitive world. She felt like a queen, travelling in state through a waterless, foodless world.
She held up her empty arms. Some other night! Some other night! Her heart assured her. With a sigh of content she lay down to sleep, well satisfied with her own diplomacy and cunning. Her last conscious thoughts were of Margaret Lampton. What was she doing to-night? What were her thoughts?
* * * * * *
Late that night, as Abdul passed the Englishwoman's tent, he spat at her door.
[1] Weigall's Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt.