“Finish your toilet and make haste.”
He disappeared. There was a prolonged noise of brushing and the gurgling and splashing of water. Lady Holme sat down on the white couch at the foot of the great bed. She was wrapped in a soft white gown made like a burnous, a veritable Arab garment, with a white silk hood at the back, and now she put up her hands and, with great precision, drew the hood up over her head. The burnous, thus adjusted, made her look very young. She had thrust her bare feet into white slippers without heels, and now she drew up her legs lightly and easily and crossed them under her, assuming an Eastern attitude and the expression of supreme impassivity which suits it. A long mirror was just opposite to her. She swayed to and fro, looking into it.
“Allah-Akbar!” she murmured. “Allah-Akbar! I am a fatalist. Everything is ordained, so why should I bother? I will live for the day. I will live for the night. Allah-Akbar, Allah-Akbar!”
The sound of water gushing from a reversed tumbler into a full basin was followed by the reappearance of Lord Holme, looking very clean and very sleepy.
Lady Holme stopped swaying.
“You look like a kid of twelve years old in that thing, Vi,” he observed, surveying her with his hands on his hips.
“I am a woman with a philosophy,” she returned with dignity.
“A philosophy! What the deuce is that?”
“You didn’t learn much at Eton and Christchurch.”
“I learnt to use my fists and to make love to the women.”