His Hour | Page 8

turn.
"Prince Milasl��vski," and she heard one of his friends call him "Gritzko." The name fell pleasantly on her ears--"Gritzko"! Why was he such a wretch as to humiliate her so? She felt horribly small. She ought never to have let him speak to her at the Sphinx. She was being thoroughly punished for her unconventionality now!
She said a few words in French to each of the others, and then, as he still stood there with that provoking smile in his splendid eyes, she turned away almost biting her lip with shame and rage.
Before she knew it she was dancing with a fierce count in green and silver. Their conversation was interesting.
"You are here since long, Madame?"
"No, Monsieur, only a few weeks, and I go to-morrow."
"Ah! you dance beautifully!"
"Do I? I am glad----"
The Russian Count held her very tightly, and they stopped quite out of breath, where the screened windows half-hid the poor ladies of the harem, who watched the throng from their safe retreat.
The Count bowed--and Tamara bowed. A section, not the whole dance, was evidently the Russian custom.
Then a voice said close to her ear:
"May I, too, have the honor of a turn, Madame?" and she looked up into the eyes of the Prince.
For a second she hesitated. Her first impulse was to scornfully say no, but she quickly realized that would be undignified and absurd; so she said yes, coldly, and let him place his arm about her. The band was playing a particularly sensuous valse, which drove all young people mad that year, and--if the Count had danced well--this man's movements were heaven. Tamara did not speak a word. She purposely did not look at him, but drooped her proud head so that the flashing diamonds of her tiara were all he could have seen of her.
He put no special meaning into the way he held her; he just danced divinely; but there was something in the creature himself of a perfectly annoying attractiveness--or so it seemed to Tamara.
They at last paused for a moment, and then he spoke. He made not the slightest allusion to the Sphinx incident. He spoke gravely of Cairo, and the polo, and the races, and said that his Grand Duke had arrived that day. He was not on his staff, but was indeed travelling in Egypt for his own amusement and delectation, he said.
He had been there since November, it seemed, and had been up the Nile, and had fortunately been able to secure a little bungalow at Mena, where he could spend some hours of peace.
Then Tamara laughed. She remembered Millicent Hardcastle's consternation over those unfortunate pyjamas. She wondered if Millicent would realize that she--Tamara--was dancing with their wearer now! When she laughed he put his arm around her once more and began dancing. This time he held her rather closely, and suddenly as she laughed again to herself provokingly, he clasped her tight.
"If you laugh like that I will kiss you--here in the room," he said.
Tamara stopped dead short. She blazed with anger.
"How dare you be so impertinent?" she said.
They were up in a corner; everyone's back was turned to them happily, for in one second he had bent and kissed her neck. It was done with such incredible swiftness and audacity that even had they been observed it must only have looked as though he bent to pick up something she had dropped. But the kiss burned into Tamara's flesh.
She could hardly keep the tears of outraged pride from her eyes.
"How dare you! How dare you!" she hissed. "Truly you are making me ashamed of having let you speak to me last night!"
"Last night?" he said, while he forcibly drew her hand within his arm and began walking toward the group of her friends. "Last night you were afraid some should see me from the hotel, and to-night you dare me. Do it once more and I will kiss your lips!"
Tamara went dead white; she felt as if the ground were sinking beneath her feet; her knees trembled. In all her smooth, conventionally ordered life she had never experienced such a strong emotion.
The Prince glanced at her, and the fierceness went out of his eyes. He bowed gravely with the most courtly homage, and left her standing by Millicent's side.
Then Tamara remembered she was a lady, and that tenue was expected of her; so she turned to her friend gaily and said how she was enjoying the ball; but her fine nostrils quivered at intervals for the rest of the night.
"Thank God!" she said to herself, when a few hours later she got into bed--"Thank God! we are going tomorrow. I shall never see him again, and no one shall ever know."
CHAPTER IV
Next day they started, escorted to the station by a troup of gushing friends. Their compartment