"The birds were up long ago," Leila perched herself on an old English love-seat. "We're to have lunch before we go to Fort Myer, and it is almost one now."
Lilah yawned, "Is it?" and went on combing her hair with the air of one who has hours before her. She wore a silken négligée of flamingo red which matched her surroundings, for this room was as flaming as the other was subdued. Yet the effect was not that of crude color; it was, rather, that of color intensified deliberately to produce a contrast. Delilah's bedroom was high noon under a blazing sun, the sitting-room was midnight under the stars.
With her black hair at last twisted into wonderful coils, Delilah surveyed her face reflectively in the mirror, and having decided that she needed no further aid from the small jars on her dressing table, she turned to her friend.
"What shall I wear, Leila?"
"If I told you," was the calm response, "you wouldn't wear it."
Delilah laughed. "No, I wouldn't. I simply have to think such things out for myself. But I meant what kind of clothes—dress up or motor things?"
"Porter will take us out in his car. You'll need your heavy coat, and something good-looking underneath, for lunch, you know."
"Is Mary Ballard going?"
"Of course. We shouldn't get Porter's car if she weren't."
"Mary wasn't with us the day we had tea with him in the Park."