A gurgle of laughter came from the same direction and the splashing ceased.  Almost the next second Julie appeared in the doorway.  She was still half-wet from the water, and her sole dress was a rosebud which she had just tucked into her hair.  She stood there, laughing, a perfect vision of unblushing natural loveliness, splendidly made from her little head poised lightly on her white shoulders to her slim feet.  “You lazy creature!” she exclaimed; “you’re awake at last, are you?  Get up at once,” and she ran over to him just as she was, seizing the bed-clothes and attempting to strip them off.  Peter protested vehemently.  “You’re a shameless baggage,” he said, “and I don’t want to get up yet.  I want some tea and a cigarette in bed.  Go away!”

“You won’t get up, won’t you?” she said.  “All right; I’ll get into bed, then,” and she made as if to do so.

“Get away!” he shouted.  “You’re streaming wet!  You’ll soak everything.”

“I don’t care,” she retorted, laughing and struggling at the same time, and she succeeded in getting a foot between the sheets.  Peter slipped out on the other side, and she ran round to him.  “Come on,” she said; “now for your bath.  Not another moment.  My water’s steaming hot, and it’s quite good enough for you.  You can smoke in your bath or after it.  Come on!”

She dragged him into the bathroom and into that bath, and then she filled a sponge with cold water and trickled it on him, until he threatened to jump out and give her a cold douche.  Then, panting with her exertions and dry now, she collapsed on the chair and began to fumble with her hair and its solitary rose.  It was exactly Julie who sat there unashamed in her nakedness, Peter thought.  She had kept the soul of a child through everything, and it could burst through the outer covering of the woman who had tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and laugh in the sun.

“Peter,” she said, “wouldn’t you love to live in the Fiji—­no, not the Fiji, because I expect that’s civilised these days, but on an almost desert island?—­though not desert, of course.  Why does one call Robinson Crusoe sort of islands desert?  Oh, I know, because it means deserted, I suppose.  But I don’t want it quite deserted, for I want you, and three or four huts of nice savages to cut up wood for the fire and that sort of thing.  And I should wear a rose—­no, a hibiscus—­in my hair all day long, and nothing else at all.  And you should wear—­well, I don’t know what you should wear, but something picturesque that covered you up a bit, because you’re by no means so good-looking as I am, Peter.”  She jumped up and stretched out her arms, “Am I not good-looking, Peter?  Why isn’t there a good mirror in this horrid old bathroom?  It’s more necessary in a bathroom than anywhere, I think.”

“Well, I can see you without it,” said Peter.  “And I quite agree, Julie, you’re divine.  You are like Aphrodite, sprung from the foam.”