His Hour | Page 3

one pretty white
eyelid, perhaps. Stirred something which only once or twice in her life
she had been dimly conscious of. Everything had been a kind of shock
to her. A shock of an agreeable description. And once driving at night
in the orange groves of Ghezireh, after some open-air fête, the heavy
scent and intoxicating atmosphere 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