olme sat looking at him for a moment in silence. She was really
irritated by his total lack of interest in what she wanted to interest
in him, irritated, too, because her curiosity remained unsatisfied. But
that abrupt look and action of absolutely unconscious animalism, chasing
the leeriness of the contented man's conceit, turned her to softness
if not to cheerfulness. She adored Fritz like that. His open-mouthed,
gaping yawn moved something in her to tenderness. She would have liked
to kiss him while he was yawning and to pass her hands over his short
hair, which was like a mat and grew as strongly as the hair which he
shaved every morning from his brown cheeks.

"Well, what about bed, old girl?" he said, stretching himself.

Lady Holme did not reply. Some part of him, some joint, creaked as
he forced his clasped hands downward and backward. She was listening
eagerly for a repetition of the little sound.

"What! Is mum the word?" he said, bending forward to stare into her
face.

At this moment the door opened, and a footman came in to extinguish the
lights and close the piano. By mistake he let the lid of the latter
drop with a bang. Lady Holme, who had just got up to go to bed, started
violently. She said nothing but stared at him for an instant with an
expression of cold rebuke on her face. The man reddened. Lord Holme was
already on the stairs. He yawned again noisily, and turned the sound
eventually into a sort of roaring chant up and down the scale as he
mounted towards the next floor. Lady Holme came slowly after him. She
had a very individual walk, moving from the hips and nearly always
taking small, slow steps. Her sapphire-blue gown trailed behind her with
a pretty noise over the carpet.

When her French maid had locked up her jewels and helped her to undress,
she dismissed her, and called out to Lord Holme, who was in the next
room, the door of which was slightly open.

"Fritz!"

"Girlie?"

His mighty form, attired in pale blue pyjamas, stood in the doorway.
In his hand he grasped a toothbrush, and there were dabs of white
tooth-powder on his cheeks and chin.

"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 u