His Hour | Page 3

had made her blood tingle. She felt it was almost wrong that things should so appeal to her senses. Anything which appealed deliberately to the senses had always been considered as more than almost wrong at Underwood Chase.
The senses were improper things which Aunt Clara for her part never quite understood why the Almighty should have had the bad taste to permit in human beings.
But the Sphinx was again talking to Tamara--only this time in the voice of a young man--who without a word of warning had risen from a bank of sand where he had been stretched motionless and unperceived.
"A fine goddess, is she not, Madame," he said. And to add to the impertinence of a stranger's addressing her at all, Tamara was further incensed by the voice being that of a foreigner!
But it was an extraordinarily pleasant voice, deep and tuneful, and the "Insolent" stood over six feet high and was as slender as Tamara herself almost--in spite of his shoulders and air of strength.
She hardly knew what to answer, he had spoken with such ease and assurance, almost with the tone of one who hails a fellow worshiper and has a right to exchange sympathy.
Tamara had been startled, too, by the sudden rising of the man when she thought she was alone, but at last she answered slowly, "Yes."
"I often come here at night," he went on, "when those devils of tourists have gone back in their devil of a tramway. Then you get her alone--and she says things to you. You think so, too, isn't it?"
"Yes," again said Tamara, convulsed with wonder at herself for speaking at all.
"At first I was angry when I saw your camel against the sky and saw you come and dismount and sit and look, I like to have her all to myself. But afterwards when I watched you I saw you meant no harm--you aren't a tourist, and so you did not matter."
"Indeed," said Tamara, the fine in her grasping the situation, the Underdown training resenting its unconventionality.
"Yes," he continued, unconcerned. "You can't look at that face and feel we any of us matter much--can you?"
"No," said Tamara.
"How many thousand years has she been telling people that? But it drives me mad, angry, furious, to see the tourists! I want to strangle them all!"
He clenched his hand and his eyes flashed.
Tamara peeped up at him--he was not looking at her--but at the Sphinx. She saw that he was extremely attractive in spite of having un-English clothes, which were not worn with ease. Gray flannel of unspeakable cut, and boots which would have made her brother Tom shriek with laughter. The Underdown part of her whispered, could he be quite a gentleman? But when he turned his face full upon her in the moonlight, that doubt vanished completely. He might even be a very great gentleman, she thought.
"Would you like to see a bit of the Arabian Nights?" he asked her.
Tamara rose. This really ought not to go on, this conversation--and yet--
"Yes, I would," she said.
"Well, the spell is broken of the Sphinx," he continued. "She can't talk to me with you there, and she can't talk to you with me near, so let us go and see something else that is interesting together."
"What?" asked Tamara.
"The Sheikh's village down below. Half the people who come don't realize it is there, and the other half would be afraid to ride through it at night--but they know me and I will take care of you."
Without the least further hesitation he called Hafis and the camel, spoke to them in Arabic, and then stood ready to help Tamara up. She seemed hypnotized, when she was settled in the high saddle. She began to realize that she was going into the unknown with a perfect stranger, but she did not think of turning back.
"What do you ride?" she asked.
"See," he said, and he made a strange low whistle, which was instantly answered by an equally strange low whinny of a horse, and a beautiful Arab appeared from the foot of the rocks--where all things were in shadow--led by a little brown boy.
"I am taking him back with me," he said, "Isn't he a beauty. I only bought him a week ago, and he already knows me."
Then he was in the saddle with the lightest bound, and Tamara, who had always admired Tom on a horse, knew that she had never seen anyone who seemed so much a part of his mount as this quaint foreigner. "I suppose he is an Austrian," she said to herself, and then added with English insular arrogance, "Only Austrians are like us."
The young man appeared quite indifferent to anything she thought. He prepared to lead the way down beyond the Sphinx, apparently into the desert.
Now that he was in front