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His Hour

by Elinor Glyn · English · Gutenberg #9470 · 322,087 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: His Hour

Author: Elinor Glyn


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9470]
                Most recently updated: December 17, 2016

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS HOUR ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Anuradha Valsa Raj, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders











His Hour

By

Elinor Glyn

Author of "Three Weeks"

1910







[Illustration: A miniature of Prince Milaslávski in the uniform of one
of his ancestors, in which he appeared at the famous fancy ball at the
Winter Palace some years ago. He was about twenty-three at the time. I
have selected this likeness of him in preference to a later photograph,
as the artist has happily caught him in one of his rarely soft moods,
and also, the face being clean shaven, the characteristic chiselling of
the lips can be seen. THE AUTHOR.]





"His Hour" is called in England and Russia "When the Hour Came."




With grateful homage and devotion I dedicate this book to

Her Imperial Highness The Grand Duchess Vladimir Of Russia

In memory of the happy evenings spent in her gracious presence when
reading to her these pages, which her sympathetic aid, in facilitating
my opportunities for studying the Russian character, enabled me to
write. Her kind appreciation of the finished work is a source of the
deepest gratification to me.

Elinor Glyn


St. Petersburg, May, 1910






CHAPTER I


The Sphinx was smiling its eternal smile. It was two o'clock in the
morning. The tourists had returned to Cairo, and only an Arab or two
lingered near the boy who held Tamara's camel, and then gradually slunk
away; thus, but for Hafis, she was alone--alone with her thoughts and
the Sphinx.

The strange, mystical face looked straight at her from the elevation
where she sat. Its sensual mocking calm penetrated her brain. The
creature seemed to be laughing at all humanity--and saying--"There is
no beyond--live and enjoy the things of the present--Eat, drink, and be
merry, for to-morrow you die, and I--I who sit here and know, tell you
there is no beyond. The things you can touch and hold to your bodies
are the only ones worth grasping."

"No, no!" said Tamara, half aloud, "I will not--I will not believe it."

"Fool," said the Sphinx. "What is your soul? And if you have one, what
have you done with it hitherto? Are you any light in the world?--No,
you have lived upon the orders of others, you have let your
individuality be crushed these twenty-four years--since the day you
could speak. Just an echo it is--that fine thing, your soul! Show it
then, if you have one! Do you possess an opinion? Not a bit of it. You
simply announce platitudes that you have been taught were the right
answers to all questions! Believe me, you have no soul. So take what
you can--a body! You certainly have that, one can see it--well, snatch
what it can bring you, since you have not enough will to try for higher
things. Grasp what you may, poor weakling. That is the wisdom sitting
here for eternity has taught me."

Tamara stirred her hands in protest--but she knew the indictment was
true. Yes, her life had been one long commonplace vista of following
leads--like a sheep.

But was it too late to change? Had she the courage? Dared she think for
herself? If not, the mystic message of the Sphinx's smile were better
followed: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die."

The blue of the sky seemed to soothe her, and speak of hope. Could any
other country produce a sky of so deep a sapphire as the night sky of
Egypt? All around was intense sensuous warmth and stillness almost as
light as day.

How wise she had been to break through the conventionality which
surrounded her--and it had required some nerve--so as to be able to
come here alone, on this one of her last nights in Egypt.

She half smiled when she thought of Millicent Hardcastle's face when
she had first suggested it.

"My dear Tamara, what--what an extraordinary thing for a woman to do!
Go to the Sphinx all alone at two o'clock in the morning. Would not
people think it very strange?"

Tamara felt a qualm for a second, but was rebellious.

"Well, perhaps--but do you know, Millicent, I believe I don't care.
That carven block of stone has had a curious effect upon me. It has
made me think as I have never done before. I want to take the clearest
picture away with me--I must go."

And even Mrs. Hardcastle's mild assertion that it could equally well be
viewed and studied at a more reasonable hour did not move Tamara, and
while her friend slumbered comfortably in her bed at Mena House, she
had set off, a self-conscious feeling of a truant schoolboy exalting
and yet frightening her.

Tamara was a widow. James Loraine had been everything that a thoroughly
respectable English husband ought to be. He had treated her with
kindness, he had given her a comfortable home--he had only asked her to
spend ten months of the year in the country, and he had never caused
her a moment's jealousy.

She could not remember her heart having beaten an atom faster--or
slower--for his coming or going. She had loved him, and her sisters and
brother, and father, all in the same devoted way, and when pneumonia
had carried him off nearly two years before, she had grieved with the
measure the loss of any one of them would have caused her--that was
sincerely and tenderly.

They were such a nice family, Tamara's!

For hundreds of years they had lived on the same land, doing their duty
to their neighbors and helping to form that backbone of England of
which we hear so much nowadays, in its passing away.

They had been members of Parliament, of solid Whig, and later of
Unionist, views. They had been staunch Generals, Chairmen of
Quarter-Sessions, riders to hounds, subscribers to charities, rigid
church-goers, disciplined, orthodox, worthy members of society.

Underdown was their name, and Underwood their home.

That Tamara should have been given that Russian appellation, in a group
of Gladys, Mabels and Dorothys, must have surely indicated that fate
meant her to follow a line not quite so mapped out as that of her
sisters'. The very manner of her entry into the world was not in
accordance with the Underdown plan.

Her mother, Lady Gertrude Underdown, had contracted a friendship with
the wife of the First Secretary of the Russian Embassy.

Foreigners were not looked upon with favor in the home circle, and
instead of staying only the two months of May and June, as she was
fully entitled to, in London, she had insisted upon remaining for July
as well that year--to be near her friend Vera and enjoy the gay world.

The Squire had grumbled, but acquiesced, though when afterward a fourth
daughter was presented to him with a request that she might have
Princess Vera for a godmother and a Russian name to be called by, he
felt himself justified in carping at fate.

"Foreign fandangoes," he designated such ideas. However, Lady Gertrude
was very ill, and had to be humored, so the affair took place, and
Tamara the baby was christened, with due state.

There were no more Russian suggestions in the family; the son and heir
who arrived a year later became plain Tom, and then Lady Gertrude
Underdown made her bow to the world and retired to the family vault in
Underwood Church.

They were all estimably brought up by an aunt, and hardly ever left the
country until each one came up in turn to be presented at Court, and go
through a fairly dull season among country neighbors on the same bent.

Two of them, including Tamara, had secured suitable husbands, and at
the age of twenty-three years the latter had been left a well-dowered
widow.

She had worn mourning for just the right period, had looked after her
affairs--handed James' place over with a good grace to James' brother
and an unliked sister-in-law, and finally, when she was wearing grays
and mauves, two years almost after her loss, she had allowed herself to
be persuaded into taking a trip to Egypt with her friend, Millicent
Hardcastle, who was recovering from influenza.

It had caused the greatest flutter at Underwood, this journey abroad!
None of them had been further than Dresden, where each girl had learned
German for a year or so before her presentation.

And what had Egypt done for Tamara? Lifted just 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 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 of her, Tamara could not help admiring the
lines of his figure. He was certainly a very decent shape, and
certainly knew how to ride.

Then it came to her that this was a most singular adventure, and the
faint pink mounted to her clear cheeks when she remembered how
dreadfully shocked Millicent would be--or any of the family! But it was
her night of rebellion, so things must take their course.

The young man rode in front until they were on the flat desert, then he
drew rein and waited for her.

"You see," he said, "we skirt these rocks and then we shall ride
through the village. One can very well imagine it has been the same
always."

They entered the little town. The streets were extremely narrow and the
dark houses gave an air of mystery--a speculation--what could be going
on behind those closed shutters? Here and there a straight blue-clad
figure slunk away round a corner. There was a deep silence and the
moonlight made the shadows sharp as a knife. Then a shaft of red light
would shoot from some strange low hovel as they passed, and they could
see inside a circle of Arab Bedouins crouching over a fire. There
seemed no hilarity, their faces were solemn as the grave.

Presently, in the narrowest and darkest street, there was a sound of
tom-toms, strains of weird music and voices, and through the chinks of
the half-opened shutters light streamed across the road--while a small
crowd of Arabs were grouped about the gate in the wall holding donkeys
and a camel.

"A wedding," said the young man. "They have escorted the bride. What
pleasure to raise a veil and see a black face! But each one to his
taste."

Tamara looked up at the window. She wondered what could be happening
within--were the other wives there as well? She would have liked to
have asked.

The young man saw her hesitation and said laconically--

"Well?"

"They are having a party," Tamara replied, with lame obviousness.

"Of course," said the young man. "Weddings and funerals--equally good
occasions for company. They are so wise they leave all to fate; they do
not tear their eyes out for something they cannot have--and fight after
disappointment. They are philosophers, these Arabs."

The little crowd round the gate now barred the road, half good
humoredly, half with menace.

"So, so," said the young man, riding in front. Then he laughed, and
putting his hand in his pocket, brought out a quantity of silver and
flung it among them with merry words in Arabic, while he pointed to the
windows of the house.

Then he seized the bridle of Tamara's camel and started his horse
forward. The crowd smiled now and began scrambling for the baksheesh,
and so they got through in peace.

Neither spoke until they were in a silent lane again.

"Sometimes they can be quite disagreeable," he said, "but it is amusing
to see it all. The Sheikh lives here--he fancies the pyramids belong to
him, just as the Khedive fancies all Egypt is his--life is mostly
imagination."

Now Tamara could see his face better as he looked up to her superior
height on the camel. He had a little moustache and peculiarly chiseled
lips--too chiseled for a man, she thought for a moment, until she
noticed the firm jaw. His eyes were sleepy--slightly Oriental in their
setting, and looked very dark, and yet something made her think that in
daylight they might be blue or gray.

He did not smile at all; as he spoke his face was grave, but when
something made him laugh as they turned the next corner, it transformed
him. It was the rippling spontaneous gaiety of a child.

Two goats had got loose from opposite hovels and were butting at one
another in the middle of the road.

He pulled up his horse and watched.

"I like any fight," he said.

But the goats fled in fear of him, so they went on.

Tamara was wondering why she felt so stupid. She wanted to ask her
strange companion a number of questions. Who he was? What he was doing
at the Sphinx?--and indeed in Egypt. Why he had spoken to her at
all?--and yet appeared absolutely indifferent as they rode along! He
had not asked her a single question or expressed the least curiosity.
For some reason she felt piqued.

Presently they emerged at the end of the village where there was a
small lake left by the retirement of the Nile. The moon, almost full,
was mirrored in it. The scene was one of extreme beauty. The pyramids
appeared an old rose pink, and everything else in tones of
sapphire--not the green-blue of moonlight in other countries. All was
breathlessly still and lifeless. Only they two, and the camel boys,
alone in the night.

The dark line of trees which border the road faced them, and they rode
slowly in that direction.

"You are going to the hotel, I suppose?" he said. "I will see you
safely to it."

And they climbed the bank on to the avenue from Cairo.

"And you?" Tamara could not prevent herself from asking. "Where do you
go?"

"To hell, sometimes," he answered, and his eyes were full of mist, "but
tonight I shall go to bed for a change."

Tamara was nonplussed. She felt intensely commonplace. She was even a
little cross with herself. Why had she asked a question?

The Arab horse now took it into his head to curvet and bound in the air
for no apparent reason, but the young man did not stir an inch--he
laughed.

"Go on, my beauty," he said. "I like you to be so. It shows you are
alive."

As they approached the hotel, Tamara began to hope no one would see
them. No one who could tell Millicent that she had a companion. She
bent down and said rather primly to the young man who was again at her
side:

"I am quite safe now, thank you. I need not trouble you any further.
Good-bye! and I am so obliged to you for showing me a new way home."

He looked up at her, and his whole face was lit with a whimsical smile.

"Yes, at the gate," he said. "Don't be nervous. I will go at the gate."

Tamara did not speak, and presently they came to the turning into the
hotel. Then he stopped.

"I suppose we shall meet again some day," he said. "They have a proverb
here, 'Meet before dawn--part not till dawn.' They see into the future
in a few drops of water in any hollow thing. Well, good-night"--and
before she could answer he was off beyond the hotel up the road and
then turning to the right on a sand-path, galloped out of sight into
what must be the vast desert.

Where on earth could he be going to?--possibly the devil--if one knew.




CHAPTER II


When Tamara woke in the morning the recollection of her camel ride
seemed like a dream. She sat for a long time at the window of her room
looking out toward the green world and Cairo. She was trying to adjust
things in her mind. This stranger had certainly produced an effect upon
her.

She wondered who he was, and how he would look in daylight--and above
all whither he had galloped into the desert. Then she wondered at
herself. The whole thing was so out of her line--so bizarre--in a life
of carefully balanced proprieties. And were the thoughts the Sphinx had
awaked in her brain true? Yes, certainly she had been ruled by others
always--and had never developed her own soul.

She was very sensitive--that last whimsical smile of the unknown had
humiliated her. She felt he had laughed at her prim propriety in
wishing to get rid of him before the gate. Indeed, she suddenly felt he
might laugh at a good many of the things she did. And this ruffled her
serenity. She put up her slender hands and pushed the thick hair back
from her forehead with an impatient gesture. It all made her
dissatisfied with herself and full of unrest.

"You don't tell me a thing about your Sphinx excursion last night,
Tamara," Millicent Hardcastle said at breakfast, rather peevishly. They
were sipping coffee together in the latter's room in dressing-gowns.
"Was it nice, and had the tourists quite departed?"

"It was wonderful!" and Tamara leant back and looked into distance.
"There were no tourists, and it made me think a number of new
things--we seem such ordinary people, Millicent."

Mrs. Hardcastle glanced up surprised, not to say offended, with coffee
cup poised in the air.

"Yes--you may wonder, but it is true, Milly--we do the same things
every day, and think the same thoughts, and are just thoroughly
commonplace and uninteresting."

"And you came to these conclusions from gazing at the Sphinx?" Mrs.
Hardcastle asked.

"Yes," said Tamara, the pink deepening for a moment in her cheeks. In
her whole life she hardly ever had had a secret. "I sat there,
Millicent, in the sand opposite the strange image, and it seemed to
smile and mock at all little things; it appeared perfectly ridiculous
that we pay so much attention to what the world says or thinks. I could
not help looking back to the time when you and I were at Dresden
together. What dull lives we have both led since! Yours perhaps more
filled than mine has been, because you have children; but really we
have both been browsing like sheep."

Mrs. Hardcastle now was almost irritated.

"I cannot agree with you," she said. "Our lives have been full of good
and pleasant things--and I hope, dear, we have both done our duty."

This, of course, ended the matter! It was so undoubtedly true--each had
done her duty.

After breakfast they started for a last donkey-ride, as they must
return to Cairo in time for the Khedive's ball that night, which, as
distinguished English ladies, they were being taken to by their
compatriots at the Agency. Then on the morrow they were to start for
Europe. Mrs. Hardcastle could not spare more time away from her babies.
Their visit had only been of four short weeks, and now it was December
27, and home and husband called her.

For Tamara's part, she could do as she pleased; indeed, for two pins
she would have stayed on in Egypt.

But that was not the intention of fate!

"Do let us go up that sand-path, Millicent," she said, when they turned
out of the hotel gate. "We have never been there, and I would like to
see where it leads to--perhaps we shall get quite a new vista from the
top----"

And so they went.

What she expected to find she did not ask herself. In any case they
rode on, eventually coming out at a small enclosure where stood a sort
of bungalow in those days--it is probably pulled down now, but then it
stood with a wonderful view over the desert, and over the green world.
Tamara had vaguely observed it in the distance before, but imagined it
to be some water-tower of the hotel, it was so bare and gaunt. It had
been built by some mad Italian, they heard afterward, for rest and
quiet.

It was a quaint place with tiny windows high up, evidently to light a
studio, and there was a veranda to look at the view towards the Nile.

When they got fairly close they could see that on this veranda a young
man was stretched at full length. A long wicker chair supported him,
while he read a French novel. They--at least Tamara--could see the
yellow back of the book, and also, one regrets to add, she was
conscious that the young man was only clothed in blue and white striped
silk pyjamas!--the jacket of which was open and showed his chest--and
one foot, stretched out and hanging over the back of another low chair,
was--actually bare!

Mrs. Hardcastle touched her donkey and hurried past--the path went so
very near this unseemly sight! And Tamara followed, but not before the
young man had time to raise himself and frown with fury. She almost
imagined she heard him saying "Those devils of tourists!" Then with the
corner of her eye ere they got out of sight, she perceived that a
blue-clad Arab brought coffee on a little tray.

She glowed with annoyance. Did he think she had come to look at him?
Did he--he certainly was quite uninterested, for he must have
recognized her; but perhaps not; people look so different in large
straw hats to what they appear with scarves of chiffon tied over their
heads. But why had she come this way at all? She wished a thousand
times she had suggested going round the pyramids instead.

"Tamara," said Mrs. Hardcastle, when they were safely descending the
further sand-path, with no unclothed young giant in view, "did you see
there was a _man_ in that chair? What a dreadful person to be lying on
the balcony--undressed!"

"I never noticed," said Tamara, without a blush. "I am surprised at you
having looked, Millie--when this view is so fine."

"But, my dear child, I could not possibly help seeing him. How you did
not notice, I can't think; he had pyjamas on, Tamara--and _bare feet!"_

Mrs. Hardcastle almost whispered the last terrible words.

"I suppose he felt hot," said Tamara; "it is a grilling day."

"But really, dear, no nice people, in any weather,
remain--er--undressed at twelve o'clock in the day for passers-by to
look at--do they?"

"Well, perhaps he isn't a nice person," allowed Tamara. "He may be mad.
What was he like, since you saw so much, Millicent?"

Mrs. Hardcastle glanced over her shoulder reproachfully. "You really
speak as though I had looked on purpose," she said. "He seemed very
long--and not fat. I suppose, as his hair was not very dark, he must be
an Englishman."

"Oh, dear, no!" exclaimed Tamara. "Not an Englishman." Then seeing her
friend's expression of surprise, "I mean, it isn't likely an Englishman
would lie on his balcony in pyjamas--at least not the ones we see in
Cairo; they--they are too busy, aren't they?"

This miserably lame explanation seemed to satisfy Millicent. It was too
hot and too disagreeable, she felt, clinging to the donkey while it
descended the steep path, to continue the subject further, having to
turn one's head over the shoulder like that; but when they got on the
broad level she began again:

"Possibly it was a madman, Tamara, sent here with a keeper--in that
out-of-the-way place. How fortunate we had the donkey boys with us!"

Tamara laughed.

"You dear goose, Millie, he couldn't have eaten us up, you know; and he
was not doing the least harm, poor thing. We should not have gone that
way; it may have been his private path."

"Still, no one should lie about undressed," Mrs. Hardcastle protested.
"It is not at all nice. Girls might have been riding with us, and how
dreadful it would have been then."

"Let us forget it, pet!" Tamara laughed, "and trot on and get some real
exercise."

So off they started.

Just as they were turning out of the hotel gate, late in the same
afternoon, a young man on an Arab horse passed the carriage. He was in
ordinary riding dress, and looked a slim, graceful sight as he trotted
ahead.

He never glanced their way. But while Tamara felt a sudden emotion of
sorts, Mrs. Hardcastle exclaimed:

"Look, look! I am sure that is he--the mad man who wore those pyjamas."




CHAPTER III


The Khedive's ball was a fairly fine sight, Tamara thought, but driving
through the streets took such a ridiculously long time, the crowd was
so great. The palace itself was, and probably is still, like all other
palaces that are decorated in that nondescript style of Third Empire
France--not a thing of beauty. But the levée uniforms of the officers
gave an air of brilliance contrasted with the civilians of the
Government of Egypt. Tamara thought their dress very ugly, it reminded
her of a clergyman's at a children's party, where he has been decorated
with caps and sham orders from the crackers to amuse the little guests.
It seemed strange to see the English faces beneath the fez. She and
Millicent Hardcastle walked about and talked to their friends. There
were many smart young gallants in the regiments then quartered in
Cairo, who enjoyed dancing with the slender, youthful widow with the
good jewels and pretty dress, and soon Tamara found herself whirling
with a gay hussar.

"Let us stop near the Royalties and look at the Russians," he said.
"You know, a Grand Duke arrived to-day, and must be here to-night."

They came to a standstill close to the little group surrounding the
Khedive, and amid the splendid uniforms of the Grand Duke's suite there
was one of scarlet, the like of which Tamara had never seen before.

Afterward she learned it was a Cossack of the Emperor's escort, but at
the moment it seemed like a gorgeous fancy dress. The high boots and
long, strangely graceful coat, cut with an Eastern hang, the white
under-dress, the way the loose scarlet sleeves fell at the wrist,
showing the white tight ones, the gold and silver trimmings and the
arms, stuck in the quaint belt, all pleased her eye extremely; and then
she recognized its wearer as the young man of the Sphinx.

How dress changes a person! she thought. He looked at ease now in this
gorgeous garment, and a very prince for a fairy tale. That accounted
for the dreadful gray flannel--he was a soldier and unaccustomed to
wearing ordinary clothes. She had heard that in foreign countries even
the officers wore their uniforms habitually; not as the English do,
merely as an irksome duty.

He did not appear to see her, but when she began dancing again, and
paused once more for breath, she was close to him as he stood some way
apart and alone.

Their eyes met. His had the same whimsical provoking smile in them
which angered and yet attracted her. He made no move to bow to her, nor
did he take any steps to be introduced. She burnt with annoyance.

"He might at least have been presented; it is too impertinent
otherwise!" she thought.

She knew she was looking her best: a fair, distinguished woman as young
and fresh as a girl. Hardly a man in the room was unconscious of her
presence. Anger lent an extra brightness to her eyes and cheeks. She
went on dancing wildly.

The next time she was near the stranger was some half an hour later,
although not once was she able to banish the scarlet form from her
view. He did not dance. He talked now and then to his Prince, and then
he was presented to the official ladies, with the rest of the suite. He
looked bored.

Tamara would not ask his name, which she could have done with ease, as
every one was interested in the Russians and glad to talk about them.
She avoided the English group of bigwigs where they were standing, and
where she had her place--And when they passed the tall Cossack again
she turned upon him a witheringly unconscious glance.

However, this was not to continue the whole night, for presently she
was requested by one of the attachés to come and be presented to the
Grand Duke, and when she had made her curtsey the suite came up in turn.

"Prince Milaslávski," 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 troupe of gushing
friends. Their compartment was a bower of flowers, and as each moment
went by Tamara's equanimity was restored by the thought that she would
soon be out of the land of her disgrace.

It is a tiresome journey to Alexandria--dusty and glaring and not of
great interest. They hurried on board the ship when they arrived,
without even glancing at their fellow passengers following in the
gangway. Neither woman was a perfect sailor and both were quite
overcome with fatigue. It promised to be a disagreeable night, too, so
they retired at once to their cabins, and were soon asleep.

The next day, which was Sunday, the wind blew, but by the afternoon
calmed down again, and Tamara decided to dress and go on deck.

"Mrs. Hardcastle went up some hours ago; she was ready for luncheon,
ma'am," her maid told her.

"She left a message for you to join her when you woke."

The ship was the usual sort of ship that goes from Alexandria to
Trieste, and the two English ladies had secured places for their chairs
in the most protected spot. Tamara rather looked forward to being able
to sit there in the moonlight and enjoy the Mediterranean.

Her maid preceded her with her rug and cushion and book, and it was not
until she was quite settled that she took cognizance of an empty chair
at her other side.

"You lazy child!" Millicent Hardcastle said. "To sleep all day like
this! It has been quite beautiful since luncheon, and I have had a most
agreeable time. That extremely polite nice young Russian Prince we met
at the Khedive's ball is here, dear; indeed, that is his chair next
you. He is with Stephen Strong. We have been talking for hours."

Tamara felt suddenly almost cold.

"I never saw him in the train or coming on board," she said, with
almost a gasp.

"Nor did I, and yet he must have been just behind us. Our places at
meals are next him, too. So fortunate he was introduced, because one
could not talk to a strange man, even on a boat. I never can understand
those people who pick up acquaintances promiscuously; can you, dear?"

"No," said Tamara, feebly.

She was pondering what to do. She could not decline to know the Prince
without making some explanation to Millicent. She also could not
flatter him so much. She must just be icily cold, and if he should be
further impertinent she could remain in her cabin.

But what an annoying contretemps! And she had thought she should never
see him again!--and here until Wednesday afternoon, she would be
constantly reminded of the most disgraceful incident in her career. All
brought upon herself, too, by her own action in having lapsed from the
rigid rules in which Aunt Clara had brought her up.

If she had not answered him at the Sphinx--he could not have--but she
refused to dwell upon the shame of this recollection.

She had quite half an hour to grow calm before the cause of her unrest
came even into sight, and when he did, it was to walk past in the
company of their old friend, Stephen Strong.

The Prince raised his cap gravely, and Tamara comforted herself by
noticing again how badly his clothes fitted him! How unsuitable, and
even ridiculous, they were to English eyes--That gave her pleasure!
Also she must have a little fun with Millicent.

"Has it struck you, Millie, the Prince is the same young man we saw in
the pyjamas on the veranda? I am surprised at your speaking to such a
person, even if he has been introduced!"

Mrs. Hardcastle raised an aggrieved head.

"Really, Tamara," she said, "I had altogether forgotten that unpleasant
incident. I wish you had not reminded me of it. He is a most
respectful, modest, unassuming young man. I am sure he would be
dreadfully uncomfortable if he were aware we had seen him so."

"I think he looked better like that than he does now," Tamara rejoined,
spitefully. "Did you ever see such clothes?"

Mrs. Hardcastle whisked right round in her chair and stared at her
friend. She was shocked, in the first place, that Tamara should speak
so lightly of a breach of decorum; and, secondly, she was astonished at
another aspect of the case.

"I thought you never saw him at all that morning!" she exclaimed.

Tamara was nettled.

"Your description was so vivid; besides, I looked back!"

"You _looked back!_ Tamara! after I had told you he wasn't dressed! My
dear, how could you?"

"Well, I did.--Hush! he is coming toward us," and Tamara hurriedly
opened a book and looked down.

"At last Mrs. Loraine has arrived on deck," she heard Millicent say;
and then, for convention's sake she was obliged to glance up and bow
coldly.

The young man did not seem the least impressed; he sat down and pulled
his rug round his knees and gazed out at the sea. The sun had set, and
the moon would soon rise in all her full glory.

There was hardly twilight and the ship's electric lights were already
being lit. The old Englishman, Stephen Strong, greeted her and took the
chair at Mrs. Hardcastle's other side. That lady was in one of her
chatty moods, when each nicely expressed sentence fell from her lips
directly after the other--all so pleasant and easy to understand. No
one ever felt with Millicent he need use an atom of brain. These are
the women men like.

Tamara pretended to read her book, but she was conscious of the near
proximity of the Prince. Nothing so magnetic in the way of a
personality had ever crossed her path as yet.

He sat as still as a statue gazing at the sea. An uncontrollable desire
to look at him shook Tamara, but she dominated it. The discomfort at
last grew so great that she almost trembled.

Then he spoke:

"Have you cat's eyes?" he asked.

Now, when there was a legitimate chance to look at him, she found her
orbs glued to her book.

"Of course not!" she said, icily.

"Then of what use to pretend you are reading in this gloom? The
miserable lantern is not good for a gleam."

Tamara was silent. She even turned a page. She would be irritating, too!

"That ball was a sight," he continued. "Did you see the harem ladies
peeping from their cage? They looked fat and ugly enough to be wisely
kept there. What a lot of fools they must have thought us, cavorting
for their amusement."

"Poor women!" said Tamara. Her voice was the primmest thing in voices
she had ever heard.

"Why poor women?" he asked. "They have all the pleasures of the body,
and no anxieties; nothing but the little excitement of trying now and
then to poison their rivals! It is the poor Khedive!--Think of his
having to wade through all that fat mass to find one pretty one!"

The tone of this conversation displeased Tamara. She did not wish to
enter into the ethics of the harem. She wished he would be silent
again, only that deep voice of his was so pleasant! His English was
wonderful, too, with hardly the least accent; and when she did allow
herself to look at him she could not help admiring the way his hair
grew, back from a forehead purely Greek. His nose was short and rather
square, while those too beautifully chiseled lips of his had an
expression of extraordinary charm. His whole personality breathed
attraction, every human being who approached him was conscious of it.
As for his eyes, they were enormous, with broad full lids, mystical,
passionate, and yet unconcerned. Always they suggested something
Eastern, though on the whole he was fair. Tamara's own soft brown hair
was only a shade lighter than his.

She was not sure yet, but now thought his eyes were gray.

She could have asked him a number of questions she wanted answered, but
she refrained. He suddenly turned and looked at her full in the face.
He had been gazing fixedly at the sea, and these movements of quickness
were disconcerting, especially as Tamara found herself caught in the
act of studying his features.

"What on earth made you go to the Sphinx?" he asked.

Anger rose in Tamara; the inference was not flattering, in his speech,
or the tone in which he uttered it.

"To count the number of stones the creature is made of, of course," she
said. "Those technical things are what one would go for at that time of
night."

And now her companion rippled with laughter, infectious, joyous
laughter.

"Ah, you are not so stupid as I thought!" he said, frankly. "You looked
poetic and fine with that gauze scarf around your head sitting
there--and then afterwards. Wheugh! It was like a pretty wax doll. I
regretted having wasted the village on you. All that is full of meaning
for me."

Tamara was interested in spite of her will to remain reserved, although
she resented the wax-doll part.

"Yes?"--she faltered.

"You can learn all the lessons you want in life from the Sphinx," he
went on. "What paltry atoms you and I are, and how little we matter to
anyone but ourselves! She is cruel, too, and does not hesitate to tear
one in pieces if she wishes and she could make one ready to get drunk
on blood."

Tamara rounded her sweet eyes.

"Then the village there, full of men with the passions of animals,
living from father to son forever the same, wailing for a death,
rejoicing at a birth, taking strong physical pleasure in their marriage
rights and their women, and beating them when they are tired; but you
are too civilized in your country to understand any of these things."

Tamara was stirred; she felt she ought to be shocked.

Contrary to her determination, she asked a question:

"Then you are not civilized in yours?"

"Not nearly so badly," he said. "The primitive forces of life still
give us emotions, when we are not wild; when we are then it is the
jolliest hell."

Tamara was almost repulsed. How could one be so odd as this man? she
thought. Was he a type, or was he mad, or just only most annoyingly
attractive and different from any one else? She found herself thrilled.
Then with a subtle change he turned and almost tenderly wrapped the
rug, which had blown a little down, more securely round her.

"You have such a small white face," he said, the words a caress. "One
must see that you are warm and the naughty winds do not blow you away."

Tamara shivered; she could not have told why.

After this the conversation became general.

Millicent joined in with her obvious remarks. The sea was much
smoother; they would be able to eat some dinner; she had heard there
was a gipsy troupe on board in the third-class, and how nice it would
be to have some music!

And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all
this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest
politeness, while his grave face betrayed him not even by a twinkle in
the eye. Only when he caught hers; then he laughed a sudden short
laugh, and he whispered:

"What a perfect woman! everything in the right place. Heaven! at the
best times she would do her knitting, and hand one a child every year!
I'll marry when I can find a wife like that!"

Tamara was furious. She resented his ridicule of Millicent, and she was
horrified at the whole speech; so, gathering her rug together, she said
she was cold, and asked Mr. Strong to pace the deck with her. Nor would
she take the faintest further notice of the Prince, until they all went
below to the evening meal.

At dinner he seemed to be practically a stranger again. He was Tamara's
neighbor, but he risked no startling speeches; in fact, he hardly spoke
to her, contenting himself with discussing seafaring matters with the
captain, and an occasional remark to Stephen Strong, who sat beyond
Mrs. Hardcastle. It was unnecessary for her to have decided beforehand
to snub him; he did not give her the chance.




CHAPTER V


On Monday they heard they would arrive at Brindisi on the Tuesday
morning, and Tamara persuaded Mrs. Hardcastle to agree to disembarking
there instead of going on to Trieste.

"We shall be home all the sooner," she said. And so it was settled. But
there was still all Monday to be got through.

It was a perfect day, the blue Mediterranean was not belying its name.
Tamara felt in great spirits, as she came on deck at about eleven
o'clock, to find Millicent taking a vigorous walk round and round with
the Russian Prince. They seemed to be laughing and chattering like old
friends. Again Tamara resented it.

"He is only making fun of poor Millie," she thought, "who never sees a
thing," and she settled herself in her chair and let her eyes feast on
the blue sea----

What should she do with her life? This taste of change and foreign
skies had unsettled her. How could she return to Underwood and the
humdrum everyday existence there? She seemed to see it mapped out on a
plain as one who stood on a mountain. She seemed to realize that always
there had been dormant in her some difference from the others. She
remembered now how often she perceived things that none of them saw,
and she knew it was because of this that it had grown into a habit with
her from early childhood to suppress the expression of her thoughts,
and keep them to herself--until outwardly, at all events, she was of
the same stolid mould as her family. The dears! they could not help it.

But about one point she was determined. She would think and act for
herself in future. Aunt Clara's frown should not prohibit any book or
any action. The world should teach her what it could.

Tamara had received a solid education; now she would profit by it, and
instead of letting all her knowledge lie like a bulb in a root-house,
she would plant it and tend it, and would hope to see sweet flowers
springing forth.

"Next summer I shall be twenty-five years old," she said to herself,
"and the whole thing has been a waste."

Each time the energetic promenaders passed her chair she heard a few
words of their conversation, on hunting often, and the dogs, and the
children, Bertie's cleverness, and Muriel's chickenpox, but always the
Prince seemed interested and polite.

Presently the old man, Stephen Strong, came up and took Mrs.
Hardcastle's chair.

"May I disturb your meditations?" he said. "You look so wise."

"No, I am foolish," Tamara answered. "Now you who know the world must
come and talk and teach me its meaning."

He was rather a wonderful old man, Stephen Strong, purely English to
look at, and purely cosmopolitan in habits and life. He had been in the
diplomatic service years ago, and had been in Egypt in the gorgeous
Ismail time; then a fortune came his way, and he traveled the earth
over. There were years spent in Vienna and Petersburg and Paris, and
always the early winter back in the land of the Sphinx.

"The world," he said, as he arranged himself in the chair, "is an
extremely pleasant place if one takes it as it is, and does not quarrel
with it. One must not be intolerant, and one must not be hypercritical.
See it all and make allowances for the weakness of the human beings who
inhabit it."

"Yes," said Tamara, "I know you are right; but so many of us belong to
a tribe who think their point of view the only one. I do, for instance;
that is why I say I am foolish."

The walkers passed again.

"There is a type for you to study," Stephen Strong said. "Prince
Milaslávski. I have known him for many years, since he was a child
almost; he is about twenty-nine or thirty now, and really a rather
interesting personality."

"Yes," said Tamara, honestly, "I feel that. Tell me about him?"

Stephen Strong lit a cigar and puffed for a few seconds, then he
settled himself with the air of a person beginning a narrative.

"He came into his vast fortune rather too young, and lived rather
fiercely. His mother was a Basmanoff; that means a kind of Croesus in
Russia. He is a great favorite with the powers that be, and is in the
Cossacks of the Escort. Something in their wild freedom appealed to him
more than any other corps. He is a Cossack himself on the mother's
side, and the blood is all rather wild, you know."

Tamara looked as she felt--interested.

"They tell the most tremendous stories about him," the old man went on,
"hugely exaggerated, of course; but the fact remains, he is a
fascinating, restless, dauntless character."

"What sort of stories?" asked Tamara, timidly.

"Not all fit for your ears, gentle lady," laughed Stephen Strong.
"Sheer devilment, mostly. It was the amusement in the beginning to dare
him to anything, the maddest feats. He ran off with a nun once, it is
said, for a bet, and deposited her in the house of the man she had
loved before her vows were taken. That was in Poland. Then he has
orgies sometimes at his country place, when every one is mad for three
days on end. It causes terrible scandal. Then he comes back like a
lamb, and purrs to all the old ladies. They say he obeys neither God
nor the Devil--only the Emperor on this earth."

"How dreadful!" force of habit made Tamara say, while her thoughts
unconsciously ran into interested fascination.

"He is absolutely fearless, and as cool as an Englishman, and there are
not any mean things told about him, though," Stephen Strong continued,
"and indeed sometimes he lives the simplest country life with his
horses and dogs, and his own people worship him, I believe. But there
is no wildest prank he is incapable of if his blood is up."

"I think he looks like it," said Tamara. "Is it because he habitually
wears uniform that his ordinary clothes fit so badly? To our eyes he
seems dressed like some commis voyageur."

"Of course," said Stephen Strong. "And even in Paris I don't suppose
you would approve of him in that respect, but if you could see him in
Petersburg, then I believe you would be like all the rest."

"All which rest?" asked Tamara.

"Women. They simply adore him. Bohemians, great ladies, actresses,
dancers, and----"

He was just going to mention those of another world, when he felt
Tamara would hardly understand him, so he stopped short.

Something in her rose up in arms.

"It shows how foolish they are," she said.

Stephen Strong glanced at her sideways, and if she could have read his
thoughts they were:

"This sweet Englishwoman is under Gritzko's spell already, and how she
is battling against it! She won't have a chance, though, if he makes up
his mind to win."

But Tamara, for all her gentle features, was no weakling; only her life
had been a long hibernation; and now the spring had come, and soon the
time of the finding of honey and a new life.

"What can he be talking about to my friend, Mr. Strong?" she asked, as
the two passed again. "Millicent is one of the last women he can have
anything in common with; she would simply die of horror if she heard
any of these stories--and he can't be interested in a word she says."

"He always does the unexpected," and Stephen Strong laughed as he said
it. He himself was amused at this ill-matched pair.

"Mrs. Hardcastle is agreeable to look at, too," he continued.

Tamara smiled scornfully.

"That is the lowest view to take. One should be above material
appearance."

"Charming lady!" said Stephen Strong. "Yes, indeed you do not know the
world."

Tamara was not angry. She looked at him and smiled, showing her
beautiful teeth.

"Of course you think me a goose," she said, "but I warned you I was
one. Tell me, shall I ever grow out of it--tell me, you who know?"

"If the teacher is young and handsome enough to make your heart beat,"
said her old companion. And then Millicent and the Prince joined them.

Mrs. Hardcastle's round blue eyes were flashing brightly, and her fresh
face was aglow with exercise and enjoyment.

"Tamara dear, you are too incorrigibly lazy. Why do you sit here
instead of taking exercise? and you have no idea of the interesting
things the Prince has been telling me. All about a Russian poet
called--oh, I can't pronounce the name, but who wrote of a devil--not
exactly Faust, you know, though something like it."

Tamara noticed that amused, whimsical, mocking gleam in the Cossack's
great eyes, but Millicent went gaily on, unconscious of anything but
herself.

"I mean those mythical, strange sort of devils who come to earth, you
know, and--and--make love to ladies--a sort of Satan like in Marie
Corelli's lovely book. You remember, Tamara, the one you were so funny
about, laughing when you read it."

"You mean 'The Demon' of Lermontoff, probably, Millicent, don't you?"
Tamara said. "A friend of my mother's translated it into English, and I
have known it since I was a child. I think it must be very fine in the
original," and she looked at the Prince.

In one moment his face became serious and sympathetic.

"You know our great poet's work, then?" he said, surprised. "One would
not have thought it!"

Then again Tamara's anger rose. There was always the insinuation in his
remarks, seemingly unconscious, and therefore the more irritating, that
she was a commonplace fool.

"Her name--the heroine's--is the same as my own," she said, gravely;
but there was a challenge in her eyes.

"Tamara!" he said. "Well--it could be--a devil might come your way, but
you would kneel and pray, and eat bonbons, and not listen to him."

"It would depend upon the devil," she said.

"Those who live the longest will see the most," and the Prince put back
his head and laughed with real enjoyment at his thoughts, just as he
had done when the two goats had butted at one another in the road.

Tamara felt her cheeks blaze with rage, but she would not enter the
lists, in spite of the late challenge in her eyes.

Mr. Strong had vacated Millicent's chair and taken his own. The party
soon settled into their legitimate places, and Tamara again took up her
book.

"No, don't read," the Prince said. "You get angry at once with me when
we talk, and the red comes into your cheeks, and I like it."

Exasperation was almost uncontrollable in Tamara. She remained silent,
only the little ear next the Prince burned scarlet.

"Some day you will come to Russia," he said, "and then you will learn
many things."

"I have no desire to go there," said Tamara, lying frankly, as it had
always been her great wish, and indeed her godmother, who never forgot
her, had often begged her to visit that northern clime; but Russia!--as
well have suggested the moon at Underwood.

"It would freeze you, perhaps, or burn you--who can tell?" the Prince
said. "One would see when you got there. I have an old lady, a dear
friend, with white hair and a mole on her cheek--someone who sees
straight. She would be good for your education."

Tamara thought it would be wiser not to show any further annoyance, so
she said lightly:

"Yes, I am only sixteen, and have never left the schoolroom; it would
be delightful to be taught how to live."

He turned and smiled at her.

"You hardly look any more--twenty, perhaps, and--never kissed!"

A memory rose up of a scorched neck, and suddenly Tamara's long
eyelashes rested on her cheek.

Then into his splendid eyes came a fierce, savage, passionate gleam,
which she did not see, but dimly felt, and he said in a low voice a
little thick:

"And--as--yet--never really kissed."

"Milly," said Tamara, as calmly as she could, "what time do we get into
Brindisi to-morrow morning? And think of it, on Thursday night we shall
be at home."

Home seemed so very safe!

The Prince did not come in to luncheon, something was the matter with
his Arab horse, and he had gone to see to it just before--a concern on
his face as of the news of illness to his nearest kin.

Tamara was gay and charming, and laughed with Stephen Strong and the
captain in quite an unusual way for her. They both thought her an
adorable woman. Poor Tamara! and so she really was.

About tea-time Prince Milaslávski turned up again.

"He is all right now," he said, sure that his listeners were in perfect
sympathy with him. "It was those fools down there. I have made them
suffer, I can say," and then he turned to Stephen Strong. "Among the
steerage there is an Alexandrian gipsy troupe. I have ordered them up
to sing to us to-night, since Madame wished it," and he turned upon
Millicent an air of deep devotion.

"Common ragged creatures, but one with some ankles and one with a
voice. In any case, we must celebrate these ladies' last night."

And thus the terrible present end to their acquaintance fell about!

Nothing could have been more charming than the Prince was until
dinner-time, and indeed through that meal, only he made Stephen Strong
change places with him, so that he might be next Mrs. Hardcastle, much
to that lady's delight.

"He is really too fascinating," she said, as she came into Tamara's
cabin to fetch her for the evening meal. "I hardly think Henry would
like his devotion to me. What do you think, dear?"

"I am sure he would be awfully jealous, Milly darling; you really must
be careful," Tamara said. And with a conscious air of complacent
pleasantly tickled virtue Mrs. Hardcastle led the way to the saloon.

It was not possible, Tamara thought, that anything so terribly
unpleasant as the Prince's having too much champagne at dinner, could
have accounted for his simply scandalous behavior after; and yet surely
that would have been the kindest thing to say. But, no, it was not that.

This was, in brief, the scene which was enacted on the upper deck:

With the permission of the captain, the gipsy troupe were brought, and
began their performance, tame enough at the commencement until the
Prince gave orders for them to be supplied with unlimited champagne,
and then the wildest dancing began. They writhed and gesticulated and
undulated in a manner which made Millicent cling on to her chair, grow
crimson in the face, and finally start to her feet.

But the worst happened when the Prince rose and, taking a tambourine,
began, with a weird shriek, to beat it wildly, his eyes ablaze and his
lips apart.

Then, seizing the chief dancer and banging it upon her head, he held
his arm about her heaving breast, as she turned to him with a
serpentine movement of voluptuous delight.

In a second he had caught hold of her, and had lifted and swung her far
out over the dark blue waters, then, with a swirl to the side, held her
suspended in the air above the open deck below.

"Ha, ha!" yelled the troupe, in frenzied pleasure, and, nimble as a
cat, one rough dark man rushed down the ladder and caught the hanging
woman in his arms. Then they all clapped and cheered and shrieked with
joy, while the Prince, putting his hands in his pockets, pulled out
heaps of gold and flung it among them.

"Back to hell, rats!" he shouted, laughing. "See, you have frightened
the ladies. You should all be killed!"

For Tamara and Millicent had risen, and with stately steps had quitted
the scene.

It was all too terrible and too vulgarly melodramatic, Tamara thought,
especially that touching of the woman and that flinging of the gold,
the latter caused by the same barbaric instinct which made him throw
the silver in the Sheikh's village by the moonlit Sphinx, only this was
worse a thousandfold.

The next morning the two ladies left the ship at Brindisi before either
the Prince or Stephen Strong was awake. Both were silent upon the
subject of the night before, until Millicent at last said when they
were in the train:

"Tamara--you won't tell Henry or your family, will you, dear? Because
really, last night he was so fascinating--but that dancing! I am sure
you feel, with me, we could have died of shame."




CHAPTER VI


When Tamara reached Underwood and saw a letter from her Russian
godmother among the pile which awaited her, she felt it was the finger
of fate, and when she read it and found it contained not only New
Year's wishes, but an invitation couched in affectionate and persuasive
terms that she should visit St. Petersburg, she suddenly, and without
consulting her family, decided she would go.

"There is something drawing me to Russia," she said to herself. "One
gets into the current of things. I felt it in the air. And why should I
hesitate now I am free? Why should I not accept, just because one
Russian man has horrified me. It is, I suppose, a big city, and perhaps
I shall never see him there."

So she announced her decision to the dumfounded household, and in less
than a week took the Nord Express.

"The Court, alas! is in mourning,"--her godmother had written,--"so you
will see no splendid Court balls, but I daresay we can divert you
otherwise, Tamara, and I am so anxious to make the acquaintance of my
godchild."

The morning after she left them Aunt Clara expressed herself thus at
breakfast:

"I see a great and most unwelcome change in dear Tamara since she
returned from Egypt, I had hoped Millicent Hardcastle would be all that
was steadying and well-balanced as a companion for her, but it seems
this modern restlessness has got into her blood. I tremble to think
what ideas she will bring from Russia. Almost savages they are
there!--She may be sent to Siberia or something dreadful, and we may
never see her again."

"Oh! come Aunt Clara!" Tom Underdown protested, as he buttered his
toast. "I think you are a little behind the times. There is a Russian
at Oxford with me and he is the decentest chap in the world. You speak
as though they almost lived on raw fish!"

"My dear Tom," said Miss Underdown, severely. "I was reading only
yesterday, in the 'Christian Clarion,' how one of their Emperors cut
off everyone's head. Dreadful customs they have, it seems; and one of
their Empresses--Catherine, I think; her name was. Well, dear, it is
too shocking to speak of--and most people were sent to the mines!"

"Oh! hang it all, Aunt Clara, you can't have looked at the date! You
can hunt up just those jolly kind of stories about our Henry VIII. if
you want to, you know, and our Elizabeth wasn't the saint they made
out. And as for Siberia, I am going there myself some day, on the
Trans-Siberian Railway. Tamara will be all right. I wish to heavens she
had taken me with her. We have got dry rot in this house, that is what
is the matter with us!"

"Tom!" almost gasped Miss Underdown. "Your manners are extremely
displeasing, and the tone of your remarks is far from what one could
wish!"

Meanwhile Tamara was speeding on her way to the North, her interest and
excitement in her journey deepening with each mile.

The snow and the vast forests impressed her from the train windows.
Every smallest shade made its effect upon her brain. Tamara was
sensitive to all form and color. She was a person who apprehended
things, and from the habit of keeping all her observations to herself
perhaps the faculty of perception had grown the keener.

The silence seemed to be the first thing she remarked on reaching the
frontier. The porters were so grave and quiet, with their bearded
kindly faces, many of them like the saints and Biblical characters in
Sunday-school picture books at home.

And finally she arrived at St. Petersburg, and found her godmother
waiting for her on the platform. They recognized each other
immediately. Tamara had several photographs of the Princess Ardácheff.

"Welcome, _ma filleule_," that lady cried, while she shook her hand.
"After all these years I can have you in my house."

They said all sorts of mutually agreeable things on their way thither,
and they looked at each other shyly.

"She is not beautiful," ran the Princess' comments. "Though she has a
superb air of breeding--that is from her poor mother--but her eyes are
her father's eyes. She is very sweet, and what a lovely skin--yes, and
eyelashes--and probably a figure when one can see beneath the
furs--tall and very slender in any case. Yes, I am far from
disappointed--far."

And Tamara thought:

"My godmother is a splendid-looking lady! I like her bright brown eyes
and that white hair; and what a queer black mole upon her left cheek,
like an early eighteenth-century beauty spot. Where have I heard lately
of someone with a mole------?

"You fortunately see our city with a fresh mantle of snow, Tamara," the
Princess said, glancing from the automobile window as they sped along.
"It is not, alas! always so white as this."

It appeared wonderful to Tamara--so quite unlike anything she had
imagined. The tiny sleighs seemingly too ridiculously small for the
enormously padded coachmen on the boxes--the good horses with their
sweeping tails--the unusual harness. And, above all, again the silence
caused by the snow.

Her first remark was almost a childish one of glee and appreciation,
and then she stopped short. What would her godmother think of such an
outburst! She must return to the contained self-repression of the time
before her visit to the Sphinx--surely in this strange land!

The Princess Ardácheff's frank face was illuminated with a smile.

"She is extremely young," she thought, "in spite of her widowhood, but
I like her, and I know we shall be friends."

Just then they arrived at her house in the Serguiefskaia. It had not
appeared to Tamara that they were approaching any particularly
fashionable quarter. A fine habitation seemed the neighbor of quite a
humble one, and here there was even a shop a few doors down, and except
for the very tall windows there was nothing exceptionally imposing on
the outside. But when they entered the first hall and the
gaily-liveried suisse and two footmen had removed their furs, and the
Princess' snow boots, then Tamara perceived she was indeed in a
glorious home.

Princess Ardácheff's house was, and is, perhaps the most stately in all
Petersburg.

As they ascended the enormous staircase dividing on the first landing,
and reaching the surrounding galleries above in two sweeps, a grave
major-domo and more footmen met them, and opened wide the doors of a
lofty room. It was full of fine pictures and objets d'art, and though
the furniture dated from the time of Alexander II., and even a little
earlier--when a flood of frightful taste pervaded all Europe--still the
stuffs and the colors were beautiful and rich, and time had softened
their crudity into a harmonious whole.

Be the decorations of a house what they will, it is the mistress of it
who gives the rooms their soul. If hers is vulgar, so will the rooms
be, even though Monsieur Nelson himself has but just designed them in
purest Louis XVI. But the worst of all are those which look as though
their owner constantly attended bazaars, and brought the superfluous
horrors she secured there back with her. Then there are vapid rooms,
and anaemic rooms, and fiddly, and messy rooms, and there are monuments
of wealth with no individuality at all.

Tamara felt all these _nuances_ directly, and she knew that here dwelt
a woman of natural refinement and a broad outlook.

She sank into an old-fashioned sofa, covered with silk a quarter of an
inch thick, and the atmosphere seemed to breathe life and completeness.

Tea and quantities of different little _bonnes bouches_ awaited them.
But if there was a samovar she did not recognize it as such; in fact,
she had seen nothing which many writers describe as "Russian."

The Princess talked on in a fashion of perfect simplicity and
directness. She told her that her friends would all welcome her and be
glad that an Englishwoman should really see their country, and find it
was not at all the grotesque place which fancy painted it.

"We are so far away that you do not even imagine us," she said. "You
English have read that there was an Ivan the Terrible and a Peter the
Great, who crushed through your Evelyn's hedges, and was a giant of
seven foot high! Many of you believe wolves prowl in the streets at
night, and that among the highest society Nihilists stalk, disguised as
heaven knows what! While the sudden disappearance of a member of any
great or small family can be accounted for by a nocturnal visit of
police, and a transportation in chains to Siberian mines! Is it not so,
Tamara?"

Tamara laughed. "Yes, indeed," she said. "I am sure that is what Aunt
Clara thinks now! Are we not a ridiculously insular people, Marraine?"

She said the last word timidly and put out her hand. "May I call you
Marraine, Princess?" she asked. "I never knew my mother, and it sounds
nice."

"Indeed, yes!" the Princess said, and she rose and kissed Tamara. "Your
mother was very dear to me, long ago, before you were born, we spent a
wild season together of youth and happiness. You shall take the place
of my child Tamara, if she had lived."

Before they had finished drinking their tea, other guests came in--a
tall old General in a beautiful uniform, and two ladies, one young and
the other old. They all spoke English perfectly, and were so agreeable
and _sans façon_, Tamara's first impression was distinctly good.

Presently she heard the elder lady say to her godmother:

"Have you seen Gritzko since his return, Vera? One hears he has a wild
fit on and is at Milasláv with------" the rest of the words were almost
whispered. Tamara found herself unpleasantly on the alert--how
ridiculous, though, she thought--Gritzko!--there might be a dozen
Gritzkos in Petersburg.

"No, he returns tonight," Princess Ardácheff said; "but I never listen
to these tales, and as no matter what he does we all forgive him, and
let him fly back into our good graces as soon as he purses up that
handsome mouth of his--it is superfluous to make critiques upon his
conduct--it seems to me!"

The lady appeared to agree to this, for she laughed, and they talked of
other things, and soon all left.

And when they were gone--"Tonight I have one or two of my nicest
friends dining," the Princess said, "whom I wish you to know, so I
thought if you rested now you would not be too tired for a little
society," and she carried Tamara off to her warm comfortable bedroom,
an immense apartment in gorgeous Empire taste, and here was a great
bunch of roses to greet her, and her maid could be seen unpacking in
the ante-chamber beyond.

The company, ten or twelve of them, were all assembled when Tamara
reached one of the great salons, which opened from the galleries
surrounding the marble hall. She came in--a slender willowy creature,
with a gentle smile of contrition--was she late?

And then the presentations took place. What struck her first was that
dark or fair, fat-faced or thin, high foreheads or low, all the ladies
wore _coiffées_ exactly the same--the hair brushed up from the forehead
and tightly _ondulés_. It gave a look of universal distinction, but in
some cases was not very becoming. They were beautifully dressed in
mourning, and no one seemed to have much of a complexion, from an
English point of view, but before the end of the evening Tamara felt
she had never met women with such charm. Surely no other country could
produce the same types, perfectly simple in manner--perfectly at ease.
Extremely highly educated, with a wide range of subjects, and a
knowledge of European literature which must be unsurpassed. Afterwards
when she knew them better she realized that here was one place left in
Europe where there were no _parvenues_ and no snobs--or if there were
any, they were beautifully concealed. Such absolute simplicity and
charm can only stay in a society where no one is trying "to arrive,"
all being there naturally by birth. There could be no room for the
_métier_ adopted by several impecunious English ladies of title--that
of foisting anyone, however unsuitable, upon society and their friends
for a well-gilded consideration.

In Russia, at least, it is the round peg in the round hole. No square
peg would have a chance of admission. Thus there are the ease and
elegance of one large and interesting family.

It seemed to Tamara that each one was endowed with natural fascination.
They made no "frais" for her. There were no compliments or gushing
welcomes. They were just casual and delightful and made her feel at
home and happy with them all.

They took "Zacouska" in an ante-room. Such quantities of strange
dishes! There seemed enough for a whole meal, and Tamara wondered how
it would be possible to eat anything further! At dinner she sat between
a tall old Prince and a diplomat. The uniforms pleased her and the
glorious pearls of the ladies. Such pearls--worth a king's ransom!

Then she was interested to see the many different sorts of wine, and
the extreme richness of the food, and finally the shortness of the meal.

The pretty custom of the men kissing the hostess' hand as they all left
the dining-room together, she found delightful.

They were drinking coffee in the blue salon, and most of the party had
retired to the bridge tables laid out, and Tamara, who played too
badly, sat by the fire with her godmother and another lady, when
suddenly the door opened and, with an air of complete insouciance and
assurance, Prince Milaslávski came in.

"I want some coffee, Tantine," he said, kissing the Princess' hand,
while he nodded to everyone else. "I was passing and so came in to get
it."

"Gritzko--back again!" the whole company cried, and the Princess,
beaming upon him fond smiles, gave him the coffee, while she murmured
her glad welcome.

The society now began to chaff him as to his doings, which he took with
the utmost _sang froid_.

"That old cat of a Marianne Mariuski sets about as usual one of her
stories. I am having an orgie at Milasláv, and this time with a
seraglio of Egyptian houris--the truth being I only brought back by the
merest chance one small troupe of Alexandrian dancers, and two
performing bears. They made us laugh for three days, Serge, Sasha, and
the rest!"

"Gritzko, will you never learn wisdom," said one lady, the Princess
Shébanoff, plaintively, while the others all laughed. "Were they
pretty, and what were they like?" they asked.

"The bears?--little angels, especially Fatima,--and with the manners of
Princesses," and he bowed to an old lady who was surveying him severely
through her pince-nez, while she held her cards awry. "Which reminds me
we are failing in ours, Tantine, you have not presented me to the
English lady, who is, I perceive, a stranger."

During all this Tamara had sat cold and silent. She was angry with
herself that this man's entrance should cause her such emotion--or
rather commotion and sensation. Why should he make her feel nervous and
stupid, unsure of herself, and uncertain what to do. Invariably he
placed her at some disadvantage, and left the settling of their
relations to himself. Whereas all such regulations ought to have been
in her hands. Now she was without choice again, she could only bow
stiffly as her godmother said his name and her name, and Prince
Milaslávski took a chair by her side and began making politenesses as
though he were really a stranger.

Had she just arrived? Did she find Russia very cold? Was she going to
stay long? etc., etc.

To all of which Tamara answered in monosyllables, while two bright
spots of rose color burned in her cheeks.

The Prince was astonishingly good looking in his Cossack's uniform, and
his eyes had a laugh in them, but a shadow round as if bed had not seen
him for several nights.

His whole manner to Tamara was different from any shade it had formerly
worn. It was as if a courtly Russian were welcoming an honored guest in
his aunt's house.

He did not mock or tease, or announce startling truths; he was pleasant
and ordinary and serene.

He and the Princess Ardácheff were no real blood relations; the first
wife of her late husband had been his mother's sister, but the
tradition of aunt had gone on in the family and the Princess loved him
almost as a son. He had always called her "Tantine" as though she had
been his real aunt.

"What did you think of Gritzko Milaslávski, Tamara?" she asked, when
all the guests were gone, and the two had retired to Tamara's room. "He
is one of the dearest characters when you know him--but a terrible
tease."

"He seemed very pleasant," Tamara said blankly, while she picked up a
book. Even to speak of him caused her unease.

"He is not at all the type of an ordinary Russian," the Princess
continued. "He has traveled so much, he is so _fin_ there is almost a
French touch in him. I am afraid you will find our young men rather
dull as a rule. They are very hard worked at their military duties, and
have not much time for _les dames du monde_."

"No?" said Tamara. "Well, the women seem to make up for it. I have
never met so many clever delightful ones."

"It is our education," the Princess said. "You see from babyhood we
learn many languages, and thus the literatures of countries are open to
us before we begin to analyze anything, and English especially we know
well, because in that language there are so many books for young girls."

"In England," said Tamara, "what may be given to young girls seems to
rule everything, no one is allowed a thought for herself, every idea
almost is brought down to that dead level--one rebels after a
while--but tell me, Marraine, if I may ask, what makes them all so
tired and gray looking, the people I have seen tonight I mean. Do they
sit up very late at parties, or what is it?"

"In the season, yes, but it is not that, it is our climate and our hot
closed-up rooms, and the impossibility of taking proper exercise. In
the summer you will not know them for the same faces."

And then she kissed her goddaughter good-night, but just at the door
she paused. "You were not shocked about the Alexandrian dancers, I
hope, child?" she said. "If one knew the truth, they were poor people
who were starving, probably, and Gritzko paid them money and helped
them out of the kindness of his heart--those are the sort of things he
generally does I find when I investigate, so I never pay attention to
what he says."

Tamara, left to herself, gazed into the glowing embers of her wood fire.

"I wonder--I wonder," she said. But what she wondered she hardly dared
admit--even to herself.




CHAPTER VII


The next day was the last of the Russian old year--the 13th of January
new style--and when Tamara appeared about ten o'clock in her
godmother's own sitting-room, a charming apartment full of the most
interesting miniatures and bibelots collected by the great Ardácheff,
friend of Catherine II., she found the Princess already busy at her
writing table.

"Good-morning, my child," she said. "You behold me up and working at a
time when most of my countrywomen are not yet in their baths. We keep
late hours here in the winter, while it is dark and cold. You will get
quite accustomed to going to bed at two and rising at ten; but
to-night, if it pleases you to fall in with what is on the tapis for
you, I fear it will be even four in the morning before you sleep.
Prince Milaslávski has telephoned that he gives a party at his house on
the Fontonka, to dine first and then go on to a café to hear the
Bohemians sing. It is a peculiarity of the place these Bohemians--we
shall drink in the New Year and then go. It will not bore you. No? Then
it is decided," and she pressed a lovely little Faberger enamel bell
which lay on the table near, and one of the innumerable servants, who
seemed to be always waiting in the galleries, appeared. She spoke to
him in Russian, and then took up the telephone by her side, and
presently was in communication with the person she had called.

"It is thou, Gritzko? Awake? Of course she is awake, and here in the
room. Yes, it is arranged--we dine--not until nine o'clock?--you cannot
be in before. Bon. Now promise you will be good.--Indeed, yes.--Of
course any English lady would be shocked at you--So!--I tell you she is
in the room--pray be more discreet," and she smiled at Tamara, and then
continued her conversation. "No, I will not talk in Russian, it is very
rude.--If you are not completely _sage_ at dinner we shall not go
on.--I am serious! Well, good-bye,"--and with a laugh the Princess put
the receiver down.

"He says nothing would shock you--he is sure you understand the world!
Well, we must amuse ourselves, and try and restrain him if he grows too
wild."

"He is often wild, then?" Tamara said.

The Princess rose and stood by the window looking out on the thickly
falling snow.

"I am afraid--a little--yes, though never in the wrong situation; above
all things Gritzko is a gentleman; but sometimes I wish he would take
life less as a game. One cannot help speculating how it can end."

"Has he no family?" Tamara asked.

"No, everyone is dead. His mother worshipped him, but she died when he
was scarcely eighteen, and his father before that. His mother is his
adored memory. In all the mad scenes which he and his companions, I am
afraid, have enacted in the Fontonka house, there is one set of rooms
no one has dared to enter--her rooms--and he keeps flowers there, and
an ever-burning lamp. There is a strange touch of sentiment and
melancholy in Gritzko, and of religion too. Sometimes I think he is
unhappy, and then he goes off to his castle in the Caucasus or to
Milasláv, and no one sees him for weeks. Last year we hoped he would
marry a charming Polish girl--he quite paid her attention for several
nights; but he said she laughed one day when he felt sad, and answered
seriously when he was gay, and made crunching noises with her teeth
when she ate biscuits!--and her mother was fat and she might grow so
too! And for these serious reasons he could not face her at breakfast
for the rest of his life! Thus that came to an end. No one has any
influence upon him. I have given up trying. One must accept him as he
is, or leave him alone--he will go his own way."

Tamara had ceased fighting with herself about the interest she took in
conversations relating to the Prince. She could not restrain her desire
to hear of him, but she explained it now by telling herself he was a
rather lurid and unusual foreign character, which must naturally be an
interesting study for a stranger.

"It was an escape for the girl at least, perhaps," she said, when the
Princess paused.

"Of that I am not sure; he is so tender to children and animals, and
his soul is full of generosity and poetry--and justice too. Poor
Gritzko," and the Princess sighed.

Then Tamara remembered their conversation during their night ride from
the Sphinx, and she felt again the humiliating certainty of how
commonplace he must have found her.

Presently the Princess took her to see the house. Every room filled
with relics of the grand owners who had gone before. There were
portraits of Peter the Great, and the splendid Catherine, in almost
every room.

"An Empress so much misjudged in your country, Tamara," her godmother
said. "She had the soul and the necessities of a man, but she was truly
great."

Tamara gazed up at the proud _débonnaire_ face, and she thought how at
home they would think of the most unconventional part of her character,
to the obliteration of all other aspects, and each moment she was
realizing how ridiculous and narrow was the view from the standpoint
from which she had been made to look at life.

For luncheon quite a number of guests arrived, the Princess, she found
afterward, was hardly ever alone.

"I don't care to go out, Tamara, as a rule, to déjeuner," she said,
"but I love my house to be filled with young people and mirth."

The names were very difficult for Tamara to catch, especially as they
all called each other by their _petits noms_--all having been friends
since babyhood, if not, as often was the case, related by ties of
blood; but at last she began to know that "Olga" was the Countess
Gléboff, and "Sonia," the Princess Solentzeff-Zasiekin--both young,
under thirty, and both attractive and quite _sans gêne_.

"Olga" was little and plump, with an oval face and rather prominent
eyes, but with a way of saying things which enchanted Tamara's ear. Her
manner was casualness itself, and had a wonderful charm; and another
thing struck her now that she saw them in daylight, not a single woman
present--and there were six or seven at least--had even the slightest
powder on her face. They were as nature made them, not the faintest aid
from art in any way. "They cannot be at all coquette like the French,"
she thought, "or even like us in England, or they could not all do
their hair like that whether it suits them or no! But what charm they
have--much more than we, or the French, or any one I know."

They were all so amusing and gay at lunch and talked of teeny scandals
with a whimsical humor at themselves for being so small, which was
delightful, and no one said anything spiteful or mean. Quantities of
pleasant things were planned, and Tamara found her days arranged for a
week ahead.

That night, as they drove to Prince Milaslávski's dinner, an annoying
sense of excitement possessed Tamara. She refused to ask herself why.
Curiosity to see the house of this strange man--most likely--in any
case, emotion enough to make her eyes bright.

It was one of the oldest houses in Petersburg, built in the time of
Catherine, about 1768, and although in a highly florid rococo style of
decoration, as though something gorgeous and barbaric had amalgamated
with the Louis XV., still it had escaped the terrible wave of 1850
vandalism, and stood, except for a few Empire rooms, a monument of its
time.

Everything about it interested Tamara. The strange Cossack servants in
the hall; the splendid staircase of stone and marble, and then finally
they reached the salons above.

"One can see no woman lives here," she thought, though the one they
entered was comfortable enough. Huge English leather armchairs elbowed
some massively gilt seats of the time of Nicholas I., and an ugly
English high fender with its padded seat, surrounded the blazing log
fire.

The guests were all assembled, but host, there was not!

"What an impertinence to keep them waiting like this," Tamara thought!
However, no one seemed to mind but herself, and they all stood laughing
or sitting on the fender in the best of spirits.

"I will bet you," said Olga Gléboff, in her attractive voice, "that
Gritzko comes in with no apology, and that we shall none of us be able
to drag from him where he has been!"

As she spoke he entered the room.

"Ah! you are all very early," he said, shaking their hands in frank
welcome. "So good of you, dear friends. Perhaps I am a little late, you
will forgive me, I know; and now for Zacouska, a wolf is tearing at my
vitals, I feel, and yours too. It is nine o'clock!"

Then the dining-room doors at the side opened and they all went in _en
bande_, and gathered round the high table, where they began to eat like
hungry natural people, selecting the dishes they wanted. Some of the
men taking immense spoonfuls of caviare, and spreading them on bread,
like children with jam. All were so joyous and so perfectly without
ceremony. Nothing could be more agreeable than this society, Tamara
thought.

Some of the men were elderly, and a number the husbands of the various
ladies; there were a few young officers and several diplomats from the
Embassies, too. But young or old, all were gay and ready to enjoy life.

"You must taste some vodka, Madame," Prince Milaslávski said, pouring a
small glass at Tamara's side. "You will not like it, but it is Russian,
and you must learn. See I take some, too, and drink your health!"

Tamara bowed and sipped the stuff, which she found very nasty, with a
whiff of ether in it. And then they all trouped to the large table in
this huge dining-hall.

Tamara sat on her host's right hand, and Princess Sonia on his left.

To-night his coat was brown and the underdress black, it was quite as
becoming as the others she had seen him in, with the strange belt and
gold and silver trimmings and the Eastern hang of it all, and his great
dark gray-blue eyes blazed at Tamara now and then with a challenge in
them she could hardly withstand.

"Now tell us, Gritzko, what did you do in Egypt this year?" Princess
Sonia said. "It is the first time that no histories of your ways have
come to our ears--were you ill?--or bored? We feared you were dead."

"On the contrary, I was greatly alive," he answered gravely. "I was
studying mummies and falling in love with the Sphinx. And just at the
end I had a most interesting kind of experience; I came upon what
looked like a woman, but turned out to be a mummy and later froze into
a block of ice!"

"Gritzko!" they called in chorus. "Can anyone invent such impossible
stories as you!"

"I assure you I am speaking the truth. Is it not so, Madame?" And he
looked at Tamara and smiled with fleeting merry mockery in his eyes.
"See," and he again turned to his guests, "Madame has been in Egypt she
tells me, and should be able to vouch for my truth."

Tamara pulled herself together.

"I think the Sphinx must have cast a spell over you, Prince," she said,
"so that you could not distinguish the real from the false. I saw no
women who were mummies and then turned into ice!"

Some one distracted Princess Sonia's attention for a moment, and the
Prince whispered, "One can melt ice!"

"To find a mummy?" Tamara asked with grave innocence. "That would be
the inverse rotation."

"And lastly a woman--in one's arms," the Prince said.

Tamara turned to her neighbor and became engrossed in his conversation
for the rest of the repast.

All the women, and nearly all the men, spoke English perfectly, and
their good manners were such that even this large party talked in the
strange guest's language among themselves.

"One must converse now as long as one can," her neighbor told her,
"because the moment we have had coffee everyone will play bridge, and
no further sense will be got out of them. We are a little behind the
rest of the world always in Petersburg, and while in England and Paris
this game has had its day, here we are still in its claws to a point of
madness, as Madame will see."

And thus it fell about.

Prince Milaslávski gave Tamara his arm and they found coffee awaiting
them in the salon when they returned there, and at once the rubbers
were made up. And with faces of grave pre-occupation this lately merry
company sat down to their game, leaving only the Prince and one lady
and Tamara unprovided for.

"Yes, I can play," she had said, when she was asked, "but it bores me
so, and I do it so badly; may I not watch you instead?"

The lady who made the third had not these ideas, and she sat down near
a table ready to cut in. Thus the host and his English guest were left
practically alone.

"I did not mean you to play," he said, "I knew you couldn't--I arranged
it like this."

"Why did you know I couldn't?" Tamara asked. "I am too stupid perhaps
you think!"

"Yes--too stupid and--too sweet."

"I am neither stupid--nor sweet!" and her eyes flashed.

"Probably not, but you seem so to me.--Now don't get angry at once, it
makes our acquaintance so fatiguing, I have each time to be presented
over again."

Then Tamara laughed.

"It really is all very funny," she said.

"And how is the estimable Mrs. Hardcastle?" he asked, when he had
laughed too--his joyous laugh. "This is a safe subject and we can sit
on the fender without your wanting to push me into the fire over it."

"I am not at all sure of that," answered Tamara. She could not resist
his charm, she could not continue quarrelling with him; somehow it
seemed too difficult here in his own house, so she smiled as she went
on. "If you laugh at my Millicent, I shall get very angry indeed."

"Laugh at your Millicent! The idea is miles from my brain--did not I
tell you when I could find a wife like that I would marry--what more
can I say!" and the Prince looked at her with supreme gravity. "Did she
tell 'Henry' that a devil of a Russian bear had got drunk and flung a
gipsy into the sea?"

"Possibly. Why were you so--horrible that night?"

"Was I horrible?"

"Probably not, but you seemed so to me," Tamara quoted his late words.

"I seem horrible--and you seem sweet."

"Surely the stupid comes in too!"

"Undoubtedly, but Russia will cure that, you will not go away for a
long time."

"In less than four weeks."

"We shall see," and the Prince got up and lit another cigarette. "You
do not smoke either? What a little good prude!"

"I am not a prude!" Tamara's ire rose again. "I have tried often with
my brother Tom, and it always makes me sick. I would be a fool, not a
prude, to go on, would not I?"

"I am not forcing you to smoke. I like your pretty teeth best as they
are!"

Rebellion shook Tamara. It was his attitude toward her--one of supreme
unconcerned command--as though he had a perfect right to take his
pleasure out of her conversation, and play upon her emotions, according
to his mood. She could have boxed his ears.

"How long ago is it since we danced in Egypt--a fortnight, or more? You
move well, but you don't know anything about dancing," he went on.
"Dancing is either a ridiculous jumping about of fools, who have no
more understanding of its meaning than a parcel of marionettes. Or it
is an expression of some sort of emotion. The Greeks understood that in
their Orchiesis, each feeling had its corresponding movement. For me it
means a number of things. When a woman is slender and pliant and smooth
of step, and if she pleases me otherwise, then it is not waste of
time!--Tonight I shall probably get drunk again," and he flicked the
ash off his cigarette with his little finger; and even though Tamara
was again annoyed with him, she could not help noticing that his hands
were fine and strong.

"But you were not drunk on the ship--you could not even plead that,"
she said, almost shocked at herself for speaking of anything so
horrible.

"It is the same thing. I feel a mad supercharge of life--an
intoxication of the senses, perhaps. It has only one advantage over the
champagne result. I am steady on my feet, and my voice is not thick!"

Tamara did not speak.

"I wonder what this music we shall hear will say to you. Will it make
the milk and water you call blood in your veins race?--it will amuse me
to see."

"I am not made for your amusement, Prince. How dare you always treat me
as you do?" And Tamara drew herself up haughtily. "And if my veins
contain milk and water, it is at least my own."

"You dared me once before, Madame," he said, smiling provokingly. "Do
you think it is quite wise of you to try it again?"

"I do not care if it is wise or no. I hate you!" almost hissed poor
Tamara.

Then his eyes blazed, as she had never seen them yet. He moved nearer
to her, and spoke in a low concentrated voice.

"It is a challenge. Good. Now listen to what I say. In a little short
time you shall love me. That haughty little head shall lie here on my
breast without a struggle, and I shall kiss your lips until you cannot
breathe."

For the second time in her life Tamara went dead white--he saw her pale
even to her lips. And since the moment was not yet, and since his mood
was not now to make her suffer, he bent over with contrition and asked
her to forgive him in a tender voice.

"Madame--I am only joking--but I am a brute," he said.

Tamara rose and walked to the bridge tables, furious with herself that
he could have seen his power over her, even though it were only to
cause rage.

He came up behind her and sat down and began to talk nicely
again--about the sights to be seen in the capital, and the interesting
museums and collections of pictures and arms. Nothing could be more
correct than his manner, and the bridge players who were within earshot
smiled, while Countess Olga thought.

"Either Gritzko has just been making love to the Englishwoman, or he is
immensely bored--The latter from his face."




CHAPTER VIII


The company stopped their game about a quarter to twelve, and tables
and champagne and glasses were brought in, and hand in hand they made a
circle and drank in the New Year.

Tamara took care to stand by Princess Ardácheff, but her host looked at
her as he raised his glass. Then they descended to the hall, and were
wrapped in their furs again to go to the café where the Bohemians were
to sing.

Tamara and the Princess were already in the latter's coupé when Prince
Milaslávski called out: "Tantine--! take me too--I am slim and can sit
between you, and I want to arrive soon, I have sent my motor on with
Serge and Valonne."

And without waiting he got in.

They had to sit very close, and Tamara became incensed with herself,
because in spite of all her late rage with the Prince, she experienced
a sensation which was disturbing and unknown. The magnetic personality
of the man was so strong. He bent and whispered something to the
Princess, and then as though sharing a secret, he leaned the other way,
and whispered to Tamara, too. The words were nothing, only some
ordinary nonsense, of which she took no heed. But as he spoke his lips
touched her ear. A wild thrill ran through her, she almost trembled, so
violent was the emotion the little seemingly accidental caress caused.
A feeling she had never realized in the whole of her life before. Why
did he tease her so. Why did he always behave in this maddening manner!
and choose moments when she was defenseless and could make no move. Of
one thing she was certain, if she should stay on in Russia she must
come to some understanding with him if possible, and prevent any more
of these ways--absolutely insulting to her self-respect.

So she shrunk back in her corner and gave no reply.

"Are you angry with me?" he whispered. "It was the shaking of the
automobile which caused me to come too near you. Forgive me, I will try
not to sin again,"--but as he spoke he repeated his offense!

Tamara clasped her hands together, tightly, and answered in the coldest
voice--

"I did not notice anything, Prince, it must be a guilty conscience
which causes you to apologize."

"In that case then all is well!" and he laughed softly.

The Princess now joined in the conversation.

"Gritzko, you must tell Mrs. Loraine how these gipsies are, and what
she will hear--she will think it otherwise so strange."

He turned to Tamara at once.

"They are a queer people who dwell in a clan. They sing like the
fiend--one hates it or loves it, but it gets on the nerves, and if a
man should fancy one of them, he must pay the chief, not the girl. Then
they are faithful and money won't tempt them away. But if the man makes
them jealous, they run a knife into his back."

"It sounds exciting at all events," Tamara said.

"It is an acquired taste, and if you have a particularly sensitive ear
the music will make you feel inclined to scream. It drives me mad."

"Gritzko," the Princess whispered to him. "You promise to be _sage_,
dear boy, do you not? Sometimes you alarm me when you go too far."

"Tantine!" and he kissed her hand. "Your words are law!"

"Alas! if that were only true," she said with a sigh.

"Tonight all shall be suited to the eleven thousand virgins!" and he
laughed. "Or shall I say suited to an English _grande dame_--which is
the same!"

They had crossed the Neva by now, and presently arrived at a building
with a gloomy looking door, and so to a dingy hall, in which a few
waiters were scurrying about. They seemed to go through endless shabby
passages, like those of a lunatic asylum, and finally arrived at a
large and empty room--empty so far as people were concerned--for at the
end there were sofas and a long narrow table, and a few smaller ones
with chairs.

The tables were already laid, with dishes of raw ham and salted almonds
and various _bonnes bouches_, while brilliant candelabra shone amidst
numerous bottles of champagne.

The company seemed to have forgotten the gloom that playing bridge had
brought over them, and were as gay again as one could wish, while
divesting themselves of their furs and snow-boots.

And soon Tamara found herself seated on the middle sofa behind the long
table, Count Gléboff on her right, and the French Secretary, Count
Valonne, at her left, while beyond him was Princess Sonia, and near by
all the rest.

Their host stood up in front, a brimming glass in his hand.

Then there filed in about twenty-five of the most unattractive
animal-looking females, dressed in ordinary hideous clothes, who all
took their seats on a row of chairs at the farther end. They wore no
national costume nor anything to attract the eye, but were simply
garbed as concierges or shop-girls might have been; and some were old,
gray-haired women, and one had even a swollen face tied up in a black
scarf! How could it be possible that any of these could be the "fancy"
of a man!

They were followed by about ten dark, beetle-browed males, who carried
guitars.

These were the famous Bohemians! Their appearance at all events was
disillusioning enough. Tamara's disappointment was immense.

But presently when they began to sing she realized that there was
something--something in their music--even though it was of an intense
unrest.

She found it was the custom for them to sing a weird chant song on the
name of each guest, and every one must drink to this guest's health,
all standing, and quaffing the glasses of champagne down at one draught.

That they all remained sober at the end of the evening seemed to do
great credit to their heads, for Tamara, completely unaccustomed to the
smoke and the warm room, feared even to sip at her glass.

The toasting over, every one sat down, Prince Milaslávski and a Pole
being the only two in front of the table, and they with immense spirit
chaffed the company, and called the tunes.

The music was of the most wild, a queer metallic sound, and the airs
were full of unexpected harmonies and nerve-racking chords. It fired
the sense, in spite of the hideous singers.

They all sat there with perfectly immovable faces and entirely still
hands,--singing without gesticulations what were evidently passionate
love-songs! Nothing could have been more incongruous or grotesque!

But the fascination of it grew and grew. Every one of their ugly faces
remained printed on Tamara's brain. Long afterward she would see them
in dreams.

How little we yet know of the force of sounds! How little we know of
any of the great currents which affect the world and human life!

And music above any other art stirs the sense. Probably the Greek myth
of Orpheus and his lute was not a myth after all; perhaps Orpheus had
mastered the occult knowledge of this great power. Surely it would be
worth some learned scientist's while to investigate from a
psychological point of view how it is, and why it is, that certain
chords cause certain emotions, and give base or elevating visions to
human souls.

The music of these gipsies was of the devil, it seemed to Tamara, and
she was not surprised at the wild look in Prince Milaslávski's eyes,
for she herself--she, well brought up, conventionally crushed English
Tamara,--felt a strange quickening of the pulse.

After an hour or so of this music, two of the younger Bohemian women
began to dance, not in the least with the movements that had shocked
Mrs. Hardcastle in the Alexandrian troupe on the ship, but a foolish
valsing, while the shoulders rose and fell and quivered like the
flapping wings of some bird. The shoulders seemed the talented part,
not the body or hips.

And then about three o'clock the entire troupe filed out of the room
for refreshment and rest. The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and
heated to an incredible extent. Some one started to play the piano, and
every one began to dance a wild round--a mazurka, perhaps--and Tamara
found herself clasped tightly in the arms of her Prince.

She did not know the step, but they valsed to the tune, and all the
time he was whispering mad things in Russian in her ear. She could not
correct him, because she did not know what they might mean.

"Doushka," he said at last. "So you are awake; so it is not milk and
water after all in those pretty blue veins! God! I will teach you to
live!"

And Tamara was not angry; she felt nothing except an unreasoning
pleasure and exultation.

The amateur bandsman came to a stop, and another took his place; but
the spell fortunately was broken, and she could pull herself together
and return to sane ways.

"I am tired," she said, when the Prince would have gone on, "and I am
almost faint for want of air." So he opened a window and left her for a
moment in peace.

She danced again with the first man who asked her, going quickly from
one to another so as to avoid having to be too often held by the
Prince. But each time she felt his arm round her, back again would
steal the delicious mad thrill.

"I hope you are amusing yourself, dear child," her godmother said.
"This is a Russian scene; you would not see it in any other land."

And indeed Tamara was happy, in spite of her agitation and unrest.

She sat down now with Olga Gléboff, and they watched the others while
they took breath. The Prince was dancing with Princess Shébanoff, and
her charming face was turned up to him with an adoring smile.

"Poor Tatiane,--" Countess Olga said low to herself.

When the gipsies returned, their music grew wilder than ever, and some
of the solos seemed to touch responsive chords in Tamara's very bones.

The Prince sat next her on the sofa now, and every few moments he would
bend over to take an almond, or light a cigarette, so that he touched
her apparently without intention, but nevertheless with intent. And the
same new and intoxicating sensation would steal through her, and she
would draw her slender figure away and try to be stiff and severe, but
with no effect.

It was long after five o'clock before it was all done, and they began
to wrap up and say "Goodnight." And the troupe, bowing, went out to
another engagement they had.

"They sing all night and sleep in the day," Count Gléboff told Tamara,
as they descended the stairs. "At this time of the year they never see
daylight, only sometimes the dawn."

"Tantine," said the Prince, "order your motor to go back. I sent for my
troika, and it is here. We must show Madame Loraine what a sleigh feels
like."

And the Princess agreed.

Oh! the pleasure Tamara found when presently they were flying over the
snow, the side horses galloping with swift, sure feet. And under the
furs she and her godmother felt no cold, while Gritzko, this wild
Prince, sat facing them, his splendid eyes ablaze.

Presently they stopped and looked out on the Gulf of Finland and a vast
view. Above were countless stars and a young, rising moon.

It was striking seven as they went to their rooms.

Such was Tamara's first outing in this land of the North.




CHAPTER IX


Six days went past before Tamara again saw the Prince. Whether he was
busy or kept away because he wished to, she did not know--and would not
ask--but a piqued sensation gradually began to rise as she thought of
him.

"I must arrange for you to go to Tsarsköi-Sélo to see the ceremony of
the Emperor blessing the waters on the 6th of our January, Tamara," her
godmother said, a day or two after the Bohemian feast. "I have seen it
so often, and I do not wish to stand about in the cold, but Sonia's
husband is one of the aides-de-camp, and, as you know, she lives at
Tsarsköi. Olga is going out there, and will take you with her, and you
three can go on; it will interest you, I am sure."

And Tamara had gladly acquiesced.

Tsarsköi-Sélo, which they reached after half an hour's train, seemed
such a quaint place to her. Like some summer resort made up of wooden
villas, only now they were all covered with snow. She and Countess Olga
had gone together to Princess Sonia's house, and from there to the
palace grounds, where they followed snow-cleared paths to a sort of
little temple near the lake, where they were allowed to stand just
outside the line of Cossacks and watch for the coming procession.

The sky was heavy, and soon the snow began to fall intermittently in
big, fluffy flakes. This background of white showed up the brilliant
scarlet uniforms of the escort. Standing in long rows, they were an
imposing sight. And Tamara admired their attractive faces, many so much
more finely cut than the guards further on. They wore fierce beards,
and they all seemed to be extremely tall and slim, with waists which
would not have disgraced a girl. And, at the end of the line at the
corner where they stood, she suddenly saw the Prince. He was talking to
some other officers, and apparently did not see them. Tamara grew angry
with herself at finding how the very sight of him moved her. The
procession, soon seen advancing, was as a lesser interest, her whole
real concentration being upon one scarlet form.

From the time the signal was given that the Emperor had started from
the palace all the heads were bare--bare in a temperature many degrees
below freezing and in falling snow! It was the Prince who gave the word
of command, and while he stood at attention she watched his face. It
was severe and rigid, like the face of a statue. On duty he was
evidently a different creature from the wild Gritzko of gipsy suppers.
But there was no use arguing with herself--he attracted her in every
case.

Then the procession advanced, and she looked at it with growing
amazement. This wonderful nation! so full of superstition and yet of
common sense. It seemed astonishing that grown-up people should
seriously assist at this ceremony of sentiment.

First came the choir-boys with thick coats covering their scarlet
gowns; then a company of singing men; then the priests in their
magnificent robes of gold and silver, and then the Emperor, alone and
bareheaded. Afterward followed the Grand Dukes and the standard of
every guard regiment and finally all the aides-de-camp.

When the Emperor passed she glanced again at the Prince. The setness of
his face had given place to a look of devotion. There was evidently a
great love for his master in his strange soul. When the last figure had
moved beyond the little temple corner, the tension of all was relaxed,
and they stood at ease again, and Gritzko appeared to perceive the
party of ladies, and smiled.

"I am coming to get some hot coffee after lunch, Sonia," he called out.
"I promised Marie."

"Does it not give them cold?" Tamara asked, as she looked at the
Cossacks' almost shaven bare heads. "And they have no great-coats on!
What can they be made of, poor things?"

"They get accustomed to it, and it is not at all cold to-day,
fortunately," Countess Olga said. "They would have their furs on if it
were. Don't you think they are splendid men? I love to see them in
their scarlet; they only wear it on special occasions and when they are
with the Emperor, or at Court balls or birthdays. I am so glad you see
Gritzko in his."

Tamara did not say she had already seen the Prince in the scarlet coat;
none of her new friends were aware that they had met before in Egypt.

All this time the guns were firing, and soon the ceremony of dipping
the cross in the water was over, and the procession started back again.

It was the same as when it came, only the priests were wiping the cross
in a napkin, and presently all passed out of sight toward the palace,
and the three ladies walked quickly back to the waiting sleigh,
half-frozen with cold.

About ten minutes after they had finished lunch, and were sitting at
coffee in Princess Sonia's cosy salon--so fresh and charming and like
an English country house--they heard a good deal of noise in the
passage, and the Prince came in. He was followed by a sturdy boy of
eight, and carried in his arms a tiny girl, whose poor small body
looked wizened, while in her little arms she held a crutch.

"We met in the hall--my friend Marie and I," he said, as he bent to
kiss Princess Sonia's hand, and then the other two ladies', "and we
have a great deal to say to one another."

"These are my children, Mrs. Loraine," Princess Sonia said. "They were
coming down to see you; but now Gritzko has appeared we shall receive
no attention, I fear," and she laughed happily, while the little boy
came forward, and with beautiful manners kissed Tamara's hand.

"You are an English lady," he said, without the slightest accent. "Have
you a little boy, too?"

Tamara was obliged to own she had no children, which he seemed to think
very unfortunate.

"Marie always has to have her own way, but while she is with Gritzko
she is generally good," he announced.

"How splendidly you speak English!" Tamara said. "And only eight years
old! I suppose you can talk French, too, as well as Russian?"

"Naturally, of course," he replied, with fine contempt. "But I'll tell
you something--German I do very badly. We have a German governess, and
I hate her. Her mouth is too full of teeth."

"That certainly is a disadvantage," Tamara agreed.

"When Gritzko gets up with us he makes her in a fine rage! She
spluttered so at him last week the bottom row fell out. We were glad!"

Princess Sonia now interrupted: "What are you saying, Peter?" she said.
"Poor Fräulein! You know I shall have to forbid Gritzko from going to
tea with you. You are all so naughty when you get together!"

There was at once a fierce scream from the other side of the room.

"Maman! we will have Gritzko to tea! I love him!--Je l'aime!" and the
poor crippled tiny Marie nearly strangled her friend with a frantic
embrace.

"You see, Maman, we defy you!" the Prince said, when he could speak.

The little boy now joined his sister, and both soon shrieked with
laughter over some impossible tale which was being poured into their
ears; and Princess Sonia said softly to Tamara:

"He is too wonderful with children--Gritzko--when he happens to like
them--isn't he, Olga? All of ours simply adore him, and I can never
tell you of his goodness and gentleness to Marie last year when she had
her dreadful accident. The poor little one will be well some day, we
hope, and so I do not allow myself to be sad about it; but it was a
terrible grief."

Tamara looked her sympathy, while she murmured a few words. Princess
Sonia was such a sweet and charming lady.

More visitors now came in, and they all drank their coffee and tea, but
the Prince paid no attention to any one beyond casual greetings; he
continued his absorbing conversation with his small friends.

Tamara was surprised at this new side of him. It touched her. And he
was such a gloriously good-looking picture as he sat there in his
scarlet coat, while Marie played with the silver cartridges across his
breast, and Peter with his dagger.

When she and Countess Olga left to catch an early afternoon train he
came too. He had to be back in Petersburg, he said. Nothing could look
more desolate than the tracts of country seen from the train windows,
so near the capital and yet wild, uncultivated spaces, part almost like
a marsh. There seemed to be nothing living but the lonely soldiers who
guarded the Royal line a hundred yards or so off. It depressed Tamara
as she gazed out, and she unconsciously sighed, while a sad look came
into her eyes.

The Prince and Countess Olga and another officer, who had joined them,
were all chaffing gaily while they smoked their cigarettes, but Gritzko
appeared to be aware of everything that was passing, for he suddenly
bent over and whispered to Tamara:

"Madame, when you have been here long enough you will learn never to
see what you do not wish." Then he turned back to the others, and
laughed again.

What did he mean? she wondered. Were there many things then to which
one must shut one's eyes?

She now caught part of the conversation that was going on.

"But why won't you come, Gritzko?" Countess Olga was saying. "It will
be most amusing--and the prizes are lovely, Tatiane, who has seen them,
says."

"I?--to be glued to a bridge table for three solid evenings. Mon Dieu!"
the Prince cried. "Having to take what partner falls to one's lot! No
choice! My heavens! nothing would drag me. Whatever game I play in
life, I will select my lady myself."

"You _are_ tiresome!" Countess Olga said. When they got to the station
the Princess's coupé was waiting, as well as the Gléboff sleigh.

"Good-bye, and a thousand thanks for taking me," Tamara said, and they
waved as Countess Olga drove off. And then the Prince handed her into
the coupé and asked her if she would drop him on the way.

For some time after they were settled under the furs and rushing along,
he seemed very silent, and when Tamara ventured a few remarks he
answered mechanically. At last after a while:

"You are going to this bridge tournament at the Varishkine's, I
suppose?" he suddenly said. "It ought to be just your affair."

"Why my affair?" Tamara asked, annoyed. "I hate bridge."

"So you do. I forgot. But Tantine will take you, all the same. Perhaps,
if nothing more amusing turns up, I will drop in one night and see;
but--wheugh!" and he stretched himself and spread out his hands--"I
have been impossibly _sage_ for over a fortnight. I believe I must soon
break out."

"What does that mean, Prince--to 'break out'?"

"It means to throw off civilized things and be as mad as one is
inclined," and he smiled mockingly while some queer, restless spirit
dwelt in his eyes. "I always break out when things make me think, and
just now--in the train--when you looked at the sad country----"

"That made you think?" said Tamara, surprised.

"Well--never mind, good little angel. And now good-bye," and he kissed
her hand lightly and jumped out; they had arrived at his house.

Tamara drove on to the Serguiefskaia with a great desire to see him
again in her heart.

    *    *    *    *    *

And so the days passed and the hours flew. Tamara had been in Russia
almost three weeks; and since the blessing of the waters the time had
been taken up with a continual round of small entertainments. The Court
mourning prevented as yet any great balls; but there were receptions,
and "bridges" and dinners, and night after night they saw the same
people, and Tamara got to know them fairly well. But after the
excursion to Tsarsköi-Sélo for several days she did not see the Prince.
His military duties took up his whole time, her godmother said. And
when at last he did come it was among a crowd, and there was no
possible chance of speech.

"This bores me," he announced when he found the room full of people,
and he left in ten minutes, and they did not see him again for a week,
when they met him at a dinner at the English Embassy.

Then he seemed cool and respectful and almost commonplace, and Tamara
felt none of the satisfaction she should have done from this changed
order of things.

At the bridge tournament he made no appearance whatever.

"Why do we see Prince Milaslávski so seldom when we go out, Marraine?"
she asked her godmother one day. "I thought all these people were his
intimate friends!"

"So they are, dear; but Gritzko is an odd creature," the Princess said.
"He asked me once if I thought he was an _imbécile_ or a performing
monkey, when I reproached him for not being at the balls. He only goes
out when he is so disposed. If some one person amuses him, or if he
suddenly wants to see us all. It is merely by fits and starts--always
from the point of view of if he feels inclined, never from the
observance of any social law, or from obligation."

"Why on earth do you put up with such manners?" Tamara exclaimed with
irritation.

"I do not know. We might not in any one else, but Gritzko is a
privileged person," the Princess said. "You can't imagine, of course,
dear, because you do not know him well enough, but he has ways and
_façons_ of coaxing. He will do the most outrageous things, and make me
very angry, and then he will come and put his head in my lap like a
child, and kiss my hands, and call me 'Tantine,' and, old woman as I
am, I cannot resist him. And if one is unhappy or ill, no one can be
more tender and devoted." Then she added dreamily:--"While as a lover I
should think he must be quite divine."

Tamara took another cup of tea and looked into the fire. She was
ashamed to show how this conversation interested her.

"Tatiane Shébanoff is madly in love with him, poor thing, and I do not
believe he has ever given her any real encouragement," the Princess
continued. "I have seen him come to a ball, and when all the young
women are longing for him to ask them to dance, he will go off with me,
or old Countess Nivenska, and sit talking half the night, apparently
unaware of any one else's presence."

"It seems he must be the most exasperating, tiresome person one has
ever heard of, Marraine," Tamara exclaimed. "He rides over you all, and
you cannot even be angry, and continually forgive him."

"But then he has his serious side," the Princess went on, eager to
defend her favorite. "He is now probably studying some deep military
problem all this time, and that is why we have not seen him,"--and then
noticing the scornful pose of Tamara's head she laughed. "Don't be so
contemptuous, dear child," she--said. "Perhaps you too will understand
some day."

"That is not very likely," Tamara said.

But alas! for the Princess' optimistic surmises as to the Prince's
occupations, a rumor spread toward the end of the week of the maddest
orgie which had taken place at the Fontonka house. It sounded like a
phantasmagoria in which unclothed dancers, and wild beasts, and
unheard-of feats seemed to float about. And the Princess sighed as she
refuted the gossip it caused.

"Oh, my poor Gritzko! if he might only even for a while remain in a
state of grace," she said.

And Tamara's interest in him, in spite of her shocked contempt, did not
decrease.

And so the time went on.

She was gradually growing to know the society better, and to get a peep
at the national point of view. They were a wonderfully uncomplex
people, with the perfect ease which only those at the bottom of the
social ladder who have not started to climb at all, and those who have
reached the top, like these, can have. They were casually friendly when
the strangers pleased them, and completely unimpressed with their
intrinsic worth if they did not. They seemed to see in a moment the
shades in people, and only to select the best. And when Tamara came to
talk seriously with even the most apparently frivolous, she found they
all had the same trace of vague melancholy and mystery, as though they
were grasping in the dark for something spiritual they wished to seize.
Their views and boundaries of principles in action seemed to be
limitless, just as their vast country seems to have no landmarks for
miles. One could imagine the unexpected happening in any of their
lives. And the charm and fascination of them continued to increase.

It was late one afternoon when Prince Milaslávski again came
prominently into view on Tamara's horizon.

She was sitting alone reading in the blue salon when he walked
unceremoniously in.

"Give me some tea, Madame," he said. "The Princess met me in the hall,
and told me I should find you here; so now let us begin by this."

Tamara poured it out and leaned back in the sofa below the beautiful
Falconet group, which made--and makes--the glory of the blue salon in
the Ardácheff House. She felt serene. These two weeks of unawakened
emotions and just pleasant entertainments since the day at Tsarsköi had
given her fresh poise.

"And what do you think of us by now, Madame?" he asked.

"I think you are a strange band," she said. "You are extremely
intellectual, you are brilliant, and yet in five minutes all
intelligence can fade out of your faces, and all interest from your
talks, and you fly to bridge."

"It is because we are primitive and unspoilt; this is our new toy, and
we must play with it; the excitement will wane, and a fresh one
come----" he paused and then went on in another tone--

"You in England have many outlets for your supervitality--you cannot
judge of other nations who have not. You had a magnificent system of
government. It took you about eight hundred years to build up, and it
was the admiration of the world--and now you are allowing your
Socialists and ignorant plebeian place hunters to pull it all to pieces
and throw it away. That is more foolish surely, than even to go crazy
over bridge!"

Tamara sighed.

"Have you ever been in England, Prince?" she asked.

He sat down on the sofa beside her.

"No--but one day I shall go, Paris is as far as I have got on the road
as yet."

"You would think us all very dull, I expect, and calculating and
restrained," Tamara said softly. "You might like the hunting, but
somehow I do not see you in the picture there--"

He got up and moved restlessly to the mantelpiece, where he leaned,
while he stirred his tea absently. There was almost an air of bravado
in the insouciant tone of his next remark--

"Do you know, I did a dreadful thing," he said. "And it has grieved me
terribly, and I must have your sympathy. I hurt my Arab horse. You
remember him, Suliman, at the Sphinx?"

"Yes," said Tamara.

"I had a little party to some of my friends, and we were rather
gay--not a party you would have approved of, but one which pleased us
all the same--and they dared me to ride Suliman from the stables to the
big saloon."

"And I suppose you did?" Tamara's voice was full of contempt.

He noticed the tone, and went on defiantly:

"Of course; that was easy; only the devil of a carpet made him trip at
the bottom again, and he has strained two of his beautiful feet. But
you should have seen him!" he went on proudly. "As dainty as the finest
gentleman in and out the chairs, and his great success was putting his
forelegs on the fender seat!"

"How you have missed your metiér!" Tamara said, and she leant back in
her sofa and surveyed him as he stood, a graceful tall figure in his
blue long coat. "Think of the triumph you would have in a Hippodrome!"

He straightened himself suddenly, his great eyes flashed, and over his
face came a fierceness she had not guessed.

"I thought you had melted a little--here in our snow, but I see it is
the mummy there all the same," he said.

Tamara laughed. For the first time it was she who held the reins.

"Even to the wrappings,"--and she gently kicked out the soft gray folds
of her skirt.

He took a step nearer her, and then he stood still, and while the
fierceness remained in his face, his eyes were full of pain.

She glanced up at him, and over her came almost a sense of indignation
that he should so unworthily pass his time.

"How you waste your life!" she said. "Oh! think to be a man, and free,
and a great landowner. To have thousands of peasants dependent upon
one's frown. To have the opportunity of lifting them into something
useful and good. And to spend one's hours and find one's pleasure in
such things as this! Riding one's favorite horse at the risk of its and
one's own neck, up and down the stairs. Ah! I congratulate you, Prince!"

He drew himself up again, as if she had hit him, and the pain in his
eyes turned to flame.

"I allow no one to criticize my conduct," he said. "If it amused me to
ride a bear into this room and let it eat you up, I would not hesitate."

"I do not doubt it," and Tamara laughed scornfully. "It would be in a
piece with all the rest."

He raised his head with an angry toss, and then they looked at each
other like two fighting cats, when fortunately the door opened, and the
Princess came in.

In a moment he had laughed, and resumed his habitually insouciant mien.

"Madame has been reading me a lecture," he said. "She thinks I am
wasted in the Emperor's escort, and a circus is my place."

Tamara did not speak.

"Why do you seem always to quarrel so, Gritzko?" the Princess said,
plaintively. "It really quite upsets me, dear boy."

"You must not worry, Tantine," and he kissed the Princess' hand. "We
don't quarrel; we are the best of friends; only we tell one another
home truths. I came this afternoon to ask you if you will come to
Milasláv next week. I think Madame ought to see Moscow, and we might
make an excursion from there just for a night," and he looked at Tamara
with a lifting of the brows.

"Then, Tantine, she could see how I cow my peasants with a knout, and
grind them to starvation. It would be an interesting picture for her to
take back to England."

"I should enjoy all that immensely, of course," Tamara said,
pleasantly. "Many thanks, Prince."

"I shall be so honored," and he bowed politely; then, turning to the
Princess: "You will settle it, won't you, Tantine?"

"I will look at our engagements, dear boy. We will try to arrange it. I
can tell you at the ballet," and the Princess smiled encouragingly up
at him. "My godchild has not seen our national dancing yet, so we go
to-night with Prince Miklefski and Valonne."

"Then it is au revoir," he said, and kissing their hands he left them.

When the door was shut and they were alone.

"Tamara, what had you said to Gritzko to move him so?" the Princess
asked. "I, who know every line of his face, tell you I have not seen
him so moved since his mother's death."

So Tamara told her, describing the scene.

"My dear, you touched him in a tender spot," her godmother said. "His
mother was a saint almost to those people at Milasláv; they worshipped
her. She was very beautiful and very sweet, and after her husband's
death she spent nearly all her life there. She started schools to teach
the peasants useful things, and she encouraged them and cared for their
health; and her great wish was that Gritzko should carry out her
schemes. She was no advanced Liberal, the late Princess, but she had
such a tender heart, she longed to bring happiness to those in her
keeping, and teach them to find happiness themselves."

"And he has let it all slide, I suppose," Tamara said.

"Well, not exactly that," and the Princess sighed deeply; "but I dare
say these over gay companions of his do not leave him much time for the
arrangement such things require. Ah! if you knew, Tamara," she went on,
"how fond I am of that boy, and how I feel the great and noble parts of
his character are running to waste, you would understand my grief."

"You are so kind, dear Marraine," Tamara said. "But surely he must be
very weak."

"No, he is not weak; it is a dare-devil wild strain in him that seems
as if it must out. He has a will of iron, and never breaks his word;
only to get him to be serious, or give his word, is as yet an
unaccomplished task. I sometimes think if a great love could come into
his life it would save him--his whole soul could wake to that."

Tamara looked down and clasped her hands.

"But it does not seem likely to happen, does it, Marraine?"

The Princess sighed again.

"I would like him to love you, dear child," she said; and then as
Tamara did not answer she went on softly almost to herself: "My brother
Alexis was just such another as Gritzko. That season he spent with me
in London, when your mother and I were young, he played all sorts of
wild pranks. We three were always together. He was killed in a duel
after, you know. It was all very sad."

Tamara stroked her godmother's hand.

"Dear, dear Marraine," she said.

Then they checked sentiment and went to dress for dinner, arm in arm.
They had grown real friends in these three short weeks.




CHAPTER X


The scene at the ballet was most brilliant, as it is always on a Sunday
night. The great auditorium, with its blue silk-curtained boxes, the
mass of glittering uniforms, and the ladies in evening-dress, although
they were all in black, made a gay spectacle almost like a gala night.
Then it is so delightful to have one's eyes pleased with what is on the
stage and yet be able to talk.

But Tamara, as she sat and looked at it, was not enjoying herself. She
was overcome with a vague feeling of unrest. She hated having to admit
that the Prince was the cause of it. She could not look ahead; she was
full of fear. She knew now that when he was near her she experienced
certain emotion, that he absorbed far too much of her thoughts. He did
not really care for her probably, and if he did, how could one hope to
be happy with such a wild, fierce man? No, she must control herself;
she must conquer his influence over her, and if she could not she could
at least go away. England seemed very uninteresting and calm--and safe!

Filled with these sage resolutions she tried to fix her eyes on the
stage, but unconsciously they continually strayed to a tall blue figure
which was seated in the front row of the stalls with a number of
officers of the Chevaliers Gardes. And when the curtain went down,--and
instead of the Prince joining them in the box, as she fully expected he
would do, he calmly leaned against the orchestra division and surveyed
the house with his glasses--she felt a sudden pang, and talked as best
she might to the many friends who thronged to pay the Princess court.

Gritzko did not even glance their way! he stood laughing with his
comrades, and it would have been impossible to imagine anything more
insouciant and attractive and provoking than the creature looked.

"No wonder Tatiane Shébanoff is in love with him--or that
actress--or--the rest!" Tamara thought.

And then a wave of rage swept over her. She at least would not give in
and join this throng! To be his plaything. _She would_ be mistress of
herself and her thoughts!

But alas! all these emotions not unmixed with pique, spoilt the
ballet's second act!

For the interval after it, the two ladies got up and went into the
little ante-chamber beyond the box. Tamara was glad. There she could
not see what this annoying Prince would do.

What he did do was to open the door in a few minutes and saunter in. He
greeted Tamara with polite indifference, and having calmly displaced
Count Valonne, sat down by the Princess' side.

Valonne was a charming person, and he and Tamara were great friends. He
chatted on now, and she smiled at him, but with ears preternaturally
sharpened she heard the conversation of the other pair.

It was this.

"Tantine, I am feeling the absolute devil tonight. Will you come and
have supper with me after this infernal ballet is over?"

"Gritzko--what is it? Something has disturbed you!"

He leant forward and rested his chin on his hands. "Well, your haughty
guest touched me with too sharp a spur, perhaps," he said, "but she was
right. I do waste my life. I have been thinking of my mother. I believe
she might not be pleased with me sometimes. And then I felt mad, and
now I must do something to forget. So if you won't sup--"

"Oh! Gritzko!" the Princess said.

"I telephoned home and ordered things to be ready. I know you don't
like a restaurant. Say you will come," and he kissed her hand. "I have
asked all the rest." And the Princess had to consent!

"You must promise not to quarrel any more with my godchild if we do. I
am sure you frighten and upset her, Gritzko--promise me," she said. He
laughed.

"I upset her! She is too cold and good to be upset!"

Tamara still continued to talk to Valonne, and presently they all moved
into the box, and the Prince sat down beside her, and again as he
leaned over in the shaded light that nameless physical thrill crept
over her. Was she really cold, she asked herself. If so, why should she
shiver as she was shivering now?

"I wonder if you have any heart at all, Madame?" he said. "If under the
mummy's wrappings there is some flesh and blood?"

Then she turned and answered him with passion. "Of course there is,"
she said.

He bent over still nearer. "Just for to-night, shall we not quarrel or
spar?" he whispered. "See, I will treat you as a sister and friend. I
want to be petted and spoilt--I am sad."

Tamara, of course, melted at once! His extraordinarily attractive voice
was very deep and had a note in it which touched her heart.

"Please don't be sad," she said softly. "Perhaps you think I was unkind
to-day, but indeed it was only because--Oh! because it seemed to me
such waste that you--you should be like that."

"It hurt like the fiend, you know," he said, "the thought of the damned
circus. I think we are particularly sensitive as a race to those sort
of things. If you had been a man I would have killed you."

"I hated to hear what you told me," and Tamara looked down. "It seemed
so dreadful--so barbaric--and so childish for a man who really has a
brain. If you were just an animal person like some of the others are,
it would not have mattered; but you--please I would like you never to
do any of these mad things again--"

Then she stopped suddenly and grew tenderly pink. She realized the
inference he must read in her words.

He did not speak for a moment, only devoured her with his great
blue-gray eyes. Of what he was thinking she did not know. It made her
uncomfortable and a little ashamed. Why had she melted, it was never
any use. So she drew herself up stiffly and leaned back in her seat.

Then down at the side by the folds of her dress he caught her hand
while he said quite low:

"Madame, I must know--do you mean that?"

"Yes," she said, and tried to take away her hand. "Yes, I mean that I
think it dreadful for any human being to throw things away--and Oh! I
would like you to be very great."

He did not let go her hand, indeed he held it the more tightly.

"You are a dear after all, and I will try," he said. "And when I have
pleased you you must give me a reward."

"Alas! What reward could I give you, Prince," she sighed.

"That I will tell you when the time comes."

Thus peace seemed to be restored, and soon the curtain fell for the
interval before the last act, and the Prince got up and went out of the
box.

He did not reappear again, but was waiting for them to start for his
house.

"I met Stephen Strong, Tantine," he said. "He left me at Trieste, you
know, and only arrived in Petersburg to-day. He has got a cousin with
him, Lord something, so I have asked them both to come along. They will
be a little late they said."

"It is not Jack Courtray by chance--is it?" Tamara asked, in an
interested voice, as they went. "Mr. Strong has a cousin who lives near
us in the country and he is always traveling about."

"Yes, I think that is the name--Courtray. So you know him then!" and
the Prince leant forward from the seat which faced them. "An ami
d'enfance?"

"We used to play cricket and fish and bird's-nest," she said. "Tom--my
brother Tom--was his fag at Eton--he is one of my oldest friends--dear
old Jack."

"How fortunate I met him to-night!"

"Indeed, yes."

Then her attention was diverted, as it always was each time she saw the
blazing braziers and heaped up flaming piles of wood at the corners of
the streets, since she had been in Russia. "How glad I am there is
something to make the poor people warm," she said.

"When it gets below twelve degrees it is difficult to enjoy life,
certainly," the Prince agreed. "And, indeed, it is hard sometimes not
to freeze."

It was a strange lurid picture, the Isvostchiks drawn round, while the
patient horses with their sleighs stood quiet some little distance off.

How hard must existence be to these poor things.

Supper could not be ready for half an hour, the Prince told them when
they got to the Fontonka House, and as they all arrived more or less
together, they soon paired off for bridge.

"I am going to show Mrs. Loraine my pictures," the host said. "She
admires our Catherine and Peter the Great."

And in the salon where they all sat, he began pointing out this one and
that, making comments in a distrait voice. But when they came to the
double doors at the end he opened them wide, and led Tamara into
another great room.

"This is the ballroom," he said. "It is like all ballrooms, so we shall
not linger over that. I have two Rembrandts in my own apartment beyond
which it may interest you to see, and a few other relics of the past."

He was perfectly matter of fact, his manner had not a shade of
gallantry in it, and Tamara accepted this new situation and followed
him without a backward thought.

They seemed to go through several sheet-shrouded salons and came out
into a thoroughly comfortable room. Its general aspect of decoration
had a Byzantine look, and on the floor were several magnificent bear
skins, while around the walls low bookcases with quantities of books
stood. And above them many arms were crossed. Over the mantelpiece a
famous Rembrandt frowned, and another from the opposite wall. But it
was strange there were no photographs of dancers or actresses about as
Tamara would have thought.

The Prince talked intelligently. He seemed to know of such things as
pictures, and understood their technique. And if he had been an elderly
art critic he could not have been more aloof.

Presently Tamara noticed underneath the first picture there was hung a
quaint sword. Something in its shape and workmanship attracted her
attention, and she asked its history.

The Prince took it down and placed it in her hand.

"That sword belonged to a famous person," he said--"a Cossack--Stenko
Razin was his name--a robber and a brigand and a great chief. He loved
a lady, a Persian Princess whom he had captured, and one day when out
on his yacht on the Volga, being drunk from a present of brandy some
Dutch travellers had brought him, he clasped her in his arms. She was
very beautiful and gentle and full of exquisite caresses, and he loved
her more than all his wealth. But mad thoughts mounted to his brain,
and after making an oration to the Volga for all the riches and plunder
she had brought him, he reproached himself that he had never given this
river anything really valuable in return, and then exclaiming he would
repair his fault, unclasped the clinging arms of his mistress and flung
her overboard."

"What a horrible brute!" exclaimed Tamara, and she put down the sword.

The Prince took it up and drew it from its sheath.

"The Cossacks had a wild strain in them even in those days," he said.
"You must not be too hard on me for merely riding my horse!"

"Would you be cruel like that, too, Prince?" Tamara asked; and she sat
down for a second on the arm of a carved chair. And when he had put the
sword back in its place, he bent forward and leaned on the back of it.

"Yes, I could be cruel, I expect," he said. "I could be even brutal if
I were jealous, or the woman I loved played me false, but I would not
be cruel to her while it hurt myself. Razin lost his pleasure for days
through one mad personal act. It would have been more sensible to have
kept her until he was tired of her, or she had grown cold to him. Don't
you agree with me about that?"

"It is a horrible history and I hate it," Tamara said. "Such ways I do
not understand. For me love means something tender and true which could
never want to injure the thing it loved."

He looked at her gravely.

"Lately I have wondered what love could mean for me. Tell me what you
think, Madame," he said.

She resolved not to allow any emotion to master her, though she was
conscious of a sudden beating of her heart.

"You would torture sometimes, and then you would caress."

"I would certainly caress."

He moved from his position and walked across the room, while he talked
as though the words burst from him.

"Yes, I should demand unquestioning surrender, and if it were refused
me, then I might be cruel. And if my love were cold or capricious,
_then_ I would leave her. But if she loved me truly--my God, it would
be bliss."

"Think how it would hurt her when you did those foolish things though,"
Tamara said.

He stopped short in his restless walk.

"No one does foolish things when he is happy, Madame. All such
outbursts are the froth of a soul in its seething. But if one were
satisfied--" he paused, and then he went on again. "Oh! If you
knew!--In the desert in Egypt I used to think I had found rest,
sometimes. I am sated with this life here. A quoi bon, Madame!--the
same thing year after year!--and then since I have known you. I have
wondered if perhaps you in your country could teach me peace."

"So many of you are so déséquilibrés," Tamara said. "You seem to be so
polished and sensible and even great, and then in a moment you are off
at a tangent, displaying that want of discipline that we at home would
not permit in a child."

"Yes it is true."

"It seems that you love, and must have, or you hate and must kill.
There are storms and passions, and the gaiety of children and their
irresponsibility, and all on the top is good manners and smiles, but
underneath--I have a feeling I know not what volcano may burst."

"Tonight I feel one could flame with me." He came up close now and
looked into her eyes, as if he were going to say something, and then he
restrained himself.

Tamara did not move, she looked at him gravely.

"You all seem as if you had no aim," she said. "You are not interested
in the politics of your country. You don't seem to do anything but kill
time--Why?"

"Our country!" he said, and he flung himself into a seat near. "It
would be difficult to make you understand about that. In the old days
of the serfs, it was all very well. One could be a good landlord and
father to them all, but now----" Then he got up restlessly and paced
the room. "Now there are so many questions. If one would think it would
drive one mad, but I am a soldier, Madame, so I do not permit myself to
speculate at all."

"Things are not then as you would wish?" she asked.

"As I would wish--no, not as I would wish--but as I told you, I do not
mix myself up with them. I only obey the Emperor and shall to the end
of my life."

Tamara saw she had stirred too deep waters. His face wore a look of
profound melancholy. She had never felt so drawn toward him. She let
her eyes take in the picture he made. There was something very noble
about his brow and the set of his head. Who could tell what thoughts
were working in his brain. Presently he got up again and knelt by her
side--his movements had the grace and agility of a cat. He took her
hand and kissed it.

"Madame, please don't make me think," he said. "The question is too
great for one man to help. I do not go with the Liberals or any of the
revolt. Indeed I am far on the other side. Good to this country should
all have come in a different, finer way, and now it must work out its
own salvation as best it may. For me, my only duty is to my master.
Nothing else could count." His eyes which looked into hers seemed great
sombre pools of unrest and pain.

She did not take away her hand and he kissed it again.

Then the clock on the mantelpiece chimed one, and she started to her
feet.

"Oh! Prince, should we not be thinking of supper," she said. "Come, let
us forget we have been serious and go back and eat!"

He rose.

"They have probably gone in without us, they know me so well," he said;
"but as you say, we will no more be serious, we will laugh."

Then he took her hand, and merrily, like two children, they ran through
all the big empty rooms to find exactly what he had predicted had
occurred. The party were at supper quite unconcerned!

It was such a gay scene. Princess Sonia and Serge Grekoff were busily
cutting raw ham, by their places; while others drank tea or vodka or
champagne, or helped themselves from various dishes the servants had
brought up. There was no ceremony or stiffness, each one did as he
pleased.

And there sitting by Olga Gléboff, already perfectly at home, was Lord
Courtray; and further down the Princess Ardácheff sat by Stephen Strong.

"Gritzko--we could not wait!" Countess Olga said.

Then both the Englishmen got up and greeted Tamara.

"Fancy seeing you here, Tamara! What a bit of luck!" Jack Courtray said.




CHAPTER XI


Jack Courtray was a thoroughly good all-around sportsman, and had an
immense success with women as a rule. His methods were primitive and
direct. When not hunting or shooting, he went straight to the point
with a beautiful simplicity unhampered by sentiment, and then when
wearied with one woman, moved on to the next.

He was a tremendously good fellow every man said. Just a natural animal
creature, whom grooming and polishing in the family for some hundred or
so of years had made into a gentleman.

He was as ignorant as he could well be. To him the geography of the
world meant different places for sport. India represented tigers and
elephants. It had no towns or histories that mattered, it had jungles
and forests. Africa said lions. Austria, chamois--and Russia, bears!

Women were either sisters, or old friends and jolly comrades--like
Tamara. Or they came under the category of sport. A lesser sport, to be
indulged in when the rarer beasts were not obtainable for his gun--but
still sport!

He found himself in a delightful milieu. The prospect of certain bears
in the near future--a dear old friend to frolic with in the immediate
present, and the problematic joys of a possible affair to be indulged
in meanwhile. No wonder he was in the best of spirits, and when Tamara,
without _arrière pensée_, took the empty place at his side, he bent
over her and filled her plate with the thinnest ham he had been able to
cut, with all the apparent air of a devoted lover. And if she had
looked up she would have seen that the Prince suddenly had begun to
watch her with a fierceness in his eyes.

"This is a jolly place," Jack Courtray said. He had just the faintest
lisp, which sounded rather attractive, and Tamara, after the storms and
emotions of the past few days, found a distinct pleasure and rest in
his obviousness.

It is an ill wind which blows no one any good, for presently the Prince
turned and devoted himself to Tatiane Shébanoff.

She was quite the prettiest of all this little clique, petite and fair
and sweet. Divorced from a brute of a husband a year or so ago, and now
married to an elderly Prince.

And she loved Gritzko with passion, and while she was silent about it,
her many friends told him so.

For his part he remained unconcerned, and sometimes troubled himself
about her, and sometimes not.

And so the evening wore on, and apparently it had no distinct sign that
it was to be one of the finger-posts of fate.

When all had finished supper, they moved back into another great room.

"You must notice this, Tamara, it is very Russian," her godmother said.

It was an immense apartment with a great porcelain stove at one corner,
and panelled with wood, and it suggested to Tamara, for no sane reason,
something of an orthodox church! One end was bare, and the other
carpeted with great Persian rugs, had huge divans spread about; there
was an electric piano and an organ, and there were also crossed foils,
and masks, and everything for a fencing bout.

The Prince went to the piano and started a valse. Then he came up to
Tamara and asked her to dance.

There was no trace left of his respectful friendliness! His sleepy eyes
were blazing, he had never looked more oriental, or more savage, or
more intense.

It was almost with a thrill of fear that Tamara yielded herself to his
request. He clasped her so tightly she could hardly breathe, all she
knew was she seemed to be floating in the air, and to be crushed
against his breast.

"Prince, please, I am suffocating!" she cried at last.

Then he swung her off her feet, and stopped by an armchair, and Tamara
subsided into it, panting, not able to speak. And all across her
milk-white chest there were a row of red marks from the heavy silver
cartridges, which cross in two rows in the Cossack dress.

"I would like those brands of me to last forever," the Prince said.


Tamara lay back in the chair a prey to tumultuous emotions. She ought
to be disgusted she supposed, and of course she was--such an
uncivilized horrible thought! but at the same time every nerve was
tingling and her pulse was beating with the strange thrills she had
only lately begun to dream of.

"Tamara! By jove! What have you done to your neck?" Jack Courtray said,
as he came up.

And Tamara was glad she had a gauze scarf over her arm, which she
wrapped around carelessly as she said:

"Nothing, Jack--let's dance!"

"What an awfully decent chap our host is, isn't he!" Lord Courtray
said, as they ambled along in their valse. "And jolly good-looking
too--for a foreigner. These Russians are men after my own heart!"

"Yes, he is good-looking," admitted Tamara. "If he weren't so wild; but
don't you think he has a frightfully savage expression, Jack?"

"If you are intending to play with him, old girl, take my advice, you
had better look out," and he laughed his merry laugh as they stopped
because the piano stopped.

Meanwhile the Prince had left the room.

"Gritzko has gone to telephone for a Tzigane band," Princess Sonia
said. "And to the club and to the reception at Madame Sueboffs, and
soon we shall have enough people for a contre-danse--and some real fun."

That it was almost three o'clock in the morning never seemed to have
struck anyone!

"Now, tell me everything, Tamara," Lord Courtray said, as they sat down
on one of the big divans. "Give me a few wrinkles. I can see one wants
to comprehend these tent ropes."

"Well, first they are the nicest people you could possibly meet, Jack,"
Tamara said. "And don't imagine because they skylark like this, and sit
up all night, that they aren't most dignified when they have to be.
That is their charm, this sense of the fitness of things. They have not
got to have any pretence like some of us have. Not one of them has a
scrap of pose. They are nice to you because they like you, or they
leave you entirely alone if they do not. And some days when they are
all together they will whisper and titter and have jokes among
themselves, leaving you completely out in the cold--what would really
be fearful ill-manners with us, but it is not in the least, it is just
they have forgotten you are there, and as likely as not you will be the
center of the whispering in the next minute. They are all like
volcanoes with the most beautiful Faberger enamel on the top."

"And the men? I suppose they make awful love?"

"I don't think so," went on Tamara, while she stupidly blushed. "They
all seem to be just merry friends, and the young ones don't go out very
much. I don't mean the quite, quite young who dance with girls, but the
young men. My godmother says they are very hard worked, and in their
leisure they like to have dinners in their regiments--or at
restaurants--with, with other sort of ladies, where they can do what
they please. It seems a little elementary--don't you think so?"

"Jolly common-sense!" said Jack Courtray.

"And then, you see, if by chance, when they are in the world, if they
do fall in love, it is possible for the lady to get a divorce here
without any scandal and fuss, and the whole clan stick to their own
member, no matter how much in the wrong she may be, and so all is
arranged, and life seems much simpler and apparently happier than it is
with us. If it is really so I cannot say, I have not been here long
enough to judge."

"It sounds a kind of Utopia," and Lord Courtray laughed. And just then
the Prince came into the room again, and over to them and they got up
and the two men went off together to examine the foils.

Presently the band arrived and more guests, and soon the contre-danse
was begun. That grown-up people could seriously take pleasure in this
amazing romp was a new and delightful idea to Tamara.

It was a sort of enormous quadrille with numerous figures and
farandole, while one sat on a chair between the figures, as at a
cotillon. And toward the end the company stamped and cried, and the
band sang, and nothing could have been more gay and exciting and wild.

Before they began, the Prince came up to Tamara and said:

"I want you to dance this with me. I have had it on purpose to show you
a real Russian sight."

They had moved into the ballroom by then, which was now a blaze of
light, while as if by magic the sheet coverings had been removed from
the chairs.

And the Prince exerted himself to amuse and please his partner, and did
not again clasp her too tight, only whenever she had turns with her
countryman, his eyes would flame, and he would immediately interrupt
them and carry her off.

Tamara felt perfectly happy, she was no longer analyzing and
questioning, and she was no longer fighting against her inclination.
She abandoned herself to the rushing stream of life.

It was about five o'clock when some one suggested supper at the Islands
was now the proper thing. This was the delightful part about them--on
no occasion was there ever a halt for the consideration of ways and
means. They wanted some particular amusement and--had it! Convention,
from an English point of view, remained an unknown quantity.--Now those
who decided to continue the feasting all got into their waiting
conveyances.

With the thermometer at fifteen degrees Reaumur, a coachman's life is
not one altogether to be envied in Russia, but apparently custom will
make anything endurable.

"I know you like the troika, Tamara," Princess Ardácheff said. "So you
go with Olga and Gritzko and your friend--only be sure you wrap up your
head."

And when they were all getting in, the Countess Gléboff said:

"It is so terribly cold tonight, Gritzko. I am going to sit with my
back to the horses, so as not to get the wind in my face."

When they were tucked in under the furs this arrangement seemed to Jack
Courtray one of real worth, for he instantly proceeded to take Countess
Olga's hand, while he whispered that he was cold and she could not be
so inhuman as to let a poor stranger freeze!

It seemed amusing to look from the windows of a private room, down upon
a gay supping throng, in the general salle at the restaurant on the
Islands, while Tziganes played and their supper was being prepared.

"Who could think it was five o'clock in the morning! What a lesson for
our rotten old County Council in London," Jack Courtray said. "By Jove!
this is the place for me!" and he proceeded to make violent love to
Olga Gléboff, to whose side he remained persistently glued.

And then the gayest repast began; nothing could have been more
entertaining or full of wild _entrain_, and yet no one over-did it, or
was vulgar or coarse.

At the last moment, when they were all starting for home about seven
o'clock, Countess Olga decided she could not face the cold of the open
sleigh, and Lord Courtray and she got into her motor instead.

It was done so quickly, Tamara was already packed into the troika, and
the outside steeds were prancing in their desire to be off.

"The horses won't stand," the Prince said, and he jumped in beside her
and gave the order to go. Thus Tamara found herself alone with him
flying over the snow under the stars.

There was a delicious feeling of excitement in her veins. They neither
of them spoke for a while, but the Prince drew nearer and yet nearer,
and presently his arm slipped round her, and he folded her close.

"Doushka," he whispered. "I hate the Englishman--and life is so short.
Let us taste it while we may," and then he bent and kissed her lips!

Tamara struggled against the intense intoxicating emotion she was
experiencing. What frightful tide was this which had swept into her
well-ordered life! She vainly put up her arms and tried to push him
away, but with each sign of revolt he held her the tighter.

"Darling," he said softly in her ear. "My little white soul. Do not
fight, it is perfectly useless, because I _will_ do what I wish. See, I
will be gentle and just caress you, if you do not madden me by trying
to resist!"

Then he gathered her right into his arms, and again bent and most
tenderly kissed her. All power of movement seemed to desert Tamara. She
only knew that she was wildly happy, that this was heaven, and she
would wish it never to end.

She ceased struggling and closed her eyes, then he whispered all sorts
of cooing love words in Russian and French, and rubbed his velvet
eyelids against her cheek, and every few seconds his lips would come to
meet her lips.

At last, when they had crossed the Troitzka bridge, he permitted her to
release herself, and only held her hands under the furs, because dawn
was breaking and they could be observed.

But when they turned into the wide Serguiefskaia, which seemed
deserted, he bent once more and this time with wildest passion he
seemed to draw her very soul through her lips.

Then ere she could speak, they drew up at the door, and he lifted her
out, and before the Suisse and the waiting footmen.

"Good-night, Madame--sleep well," he calmly said.

But Tamara, trembling with mad emotion, rushed quickly to her room.




CHAPTER XII


In life there comes sometimes a tidal wave in the ebb of which all old
landmarks are washed out. And so it was with Tamara. She had fallen
into bed half dead with fatigue and emotion, but when she woke the
sickly gray light of a Russian winter mid-day pouring into her room,
and saw her maid's stolid face, back rushed the events of the night,
and she drew in her breath with almost a hiss. Yes, nothing could ever
be the same again. "Leave me, Johnson," she said, "I am too tired, I
cannot get up yet."

And the respectful maid crept from the room.

Then she lay back in her pillows and forced herself to face the
position, and review what she had done, and what she must now do.

First of all, she loved Gritzko, that she could no longer argue with
herself about. Secondly, she was an English lady, and could not let
herself be kissed by a man whose habit it was to play with whom he
chose, and then pass on. She was free, and he was free, it followed his
caressing then--divine as it had been--was an absolute insult. If he
wanted her so much he should have asked her to marry him. He had not
done so, therefore the only thing which remained for her to do, was to
go away. The sooner the better.

Then she thought of all the past.

From the moment of the good-bye at the Sphinx it had been a humiliation
for her. Always, always, he had been victor of the situation. Had she
been ridiculously weak? What was this fate which had fallen upon her?
What had she done to draw such circumstances? Then even as she lay
there, communing sternly with herself, a thrill swept over her, as her
thoughts went back to that last passionate kiss. And her slender hands
clenched under the clothes.

"If he really loved me," she sighed, "I would face the uncertain
happiness with him. I know now he causes me emotions of which I never
dreamed and for which I would pay that price. But I have no single
proof that he does really love me. He may be playing in the same way
with Tatiane Shébanoff--and the rest." And at this picture her pride
rose in wild revolt.

Never, never! should he play with her again at least!

Then she thought of all her stupid ways, perhaps if she had been
different, not so hampered by prejudice, but natural like all these
women here, perhaps she could have made him really love her.--Ah!--if
so.

This possibility, however, brought no comfort, only increased regret.

The first thing now to be done was to restrain herself in an iron
control. To meet him casually. To announce to her godmother that she
must go home, and as soon as the visit to Moscow should be over, she
would return to England. She must not be too sudden, he would think she
was afraid. She would be just stiff and polite and serene, and show him
he was a matter of indifference to her, and that she had no intention
to be trifled with again!

At last, aching in mind and body, she lay still. Meanwhile, below in
the blue salon, the Princess Ardácheff was conversing with Stephen
Strong.

"Yes, mon ami," she was saying. "You must come--we go in a week--the
day after my ball, to show Tamara Moscow, and from there to spend a
night at Milasláv. Olga and Sonia and her husband and the Englishman,
and Serge Grekoff and Valonne are coming, and it will be quite amusing."

"Think of the travelling and my old bones!" And Stephen Strong smiled.
"But since it is your wish, dear Princess, of course I must come."

They were old and very intimate friends these two, and with him the
Princess was accustomed to talk over most of her plans.

He got up and lit a cigarette, then he walked across the room and came
back again, while his hostess surveyed him with surprise. At last he
sat down.

"Vera, tell me the truth," he said. "How are things going? I confess
last night gave me qualms."

The Princess gazed at him inquiringly.

"Why qualms?"

"You see, Gritzko is quite an exceptional person, he is no type of a
Russian or any other nation that one can reckon with, he is himself,
and he has the most attractive magnetic personality a man could have."

"Well, then?"

"And if you knew the simple unsophisticated atmosphere in which your
godchild has been brought up----."

"Stephen, really,"--and the Princess tapped her foot impatiently.
"Please speak out. Say what you mean."

"She is no more fitted to cope with him than a baby, that is what I
mean."

"But why should she cope with him? Are not men tiresome!" and the
Princess sighed. "Can't you see I want them to love one another. It is
just that--if she would not snub and resist him--all would be well."

"It did not look much like resistance last night," said Stephen Strong.
"And if Gritzko is only playing the fool, and means nothing serious,
then I think it is a shame."

"You don't suggest, surely, that I should interfere with fate?"

"Only to the extent of not giving him unlimited opportunities. You
remember that season in London--and your brother Alexis--and her
mother, and what came of that!"

The Princess put her hands up with a sudden gesture and covered her
eyes.

"Oh! Stephen! how cruel of you to bring it back to me," she said; "but
this is quite different--they are free--and it is my dearest wish that
Tamara and Gritzko should be united." Then she continued in another
tone. "I think you are quite wrong in any case. My plan is to throw
them together as much as possible--he will see her real worth and
delicate sweetness--and they will get over their quarrelling. It is her
reserve and resistance which drives him mad. Sometimes I do not know
how he will act."

"No, one can never count upon how he will act!" and Stephen Strong
smiled. "But since you are satisfied I will say no more, only between
you don't break my gentle little countrywoman's heart."

"You hurt me very much, Stephen!" the Princess said. "You--you--of all
people, who know the tie there is between Tamara and me. You to suggest
even that I would aid in breaking her heart."

"Dear Vera, forgive me," and he kissed her plump white hand. "I will
suggest nothing, and will leave it all to you, but do not forget a
man's passions, and Gritzko, as we know, is not made of snow!"

"You all misjudge him, my poor Gritzko," the Princess said, hardly
mollified. "He has the noblest nature underneath, but some day you will
know."

It was late in the afternoon when Tamara appeared, to find a room full
of guests having tea. Her mind was made up, and she had regained her
calm.

She would use the whole of her intelligence and play the game. She
would be completely at ease and indifferent to Gritzko and would be
incidentally as nice as possible to Jack. And so get through the short
time before she must go home. "For," she had reasoned with herself
sadly, "If he had loved me really he would never have behaved as he has
done."

So when the Prince and Lord Courtray came in together presently, her
greeting to both was naturalness itself, and she took Jack off to a
distant sofa with friendly familiarity, and conversed with him upon
their home affairs.

"By Jove! you know, Tamara, you are awfully improved, my child," Lord
Courtray said, presently. "You've acquired some kind of a look in your
eye! If I wasn't so taken with that darling little Countess Olga I
should feel inclined to make love to you myself."

"You dear silly old Jack!" Tamara said.

It was Lord Courtray's fashion, when talking to any woman, even his own
mother, to lean over her with rather a devoted look. And Tamara
glancing up caught sight of Prince Milaslávski's face. It wore an
expression which almost filled her with fear. Of all things she must
provoke no quarrel between him and dear old Jack, who was quite
blameless in the affair.

At the same time there was a consolation in the knowledge that she
could make him feel.

She thought it wiser soon to rise and return to the general group,
while Jack, on his own amusement bent, now took his leave.

She sat down by Stephen Strong, she was in a most gracious mood it
seemed.

"You have heard of our excursion to Moscow, Mr. Strong," she said. "The
Princess says you must come too, I am looking forward to it immensely."

"We ought to have a most promising time in front of us," that old cynic
replied, while he puffed rings of smoke. "It all should be as full of
adventure as an egg is full of meat!"

"I have been reading up the guide books, so as to be thoroughly learned
and teach Jack--he is so terribly ignorant always, worse than Tom!" and
she laughed.

"We must try and see the whole show, and if the snow lasts, as it
promises to do, we should have a delightful time."

"Gritzko," Princess Ardácheff said. "How many versts is it from Moscow
to Milasláv?"

The Prince had been leaning on the mantelpiece without speaking for
some moments, listening to Tamara's conversation, but now he joined in,
and sinking into a chair beside her, answered from there.

"Thirty versts, Tantine--we shall go in troikas--but you must send your
servants on the night before."

Then he turned to Tamara, who seemed wonderfully absorbed, almost
whispering to Stephen Strong. "Did you sleep well, Madame?" he said.
There was an expression of mocking defiance in his glance, which
angered Tamara. However, faithful to her resolutions, she kept herself
calm.

"Never better, thank you, Prince. It was a most interesting evening,
and I am learning the customs of the country," she said. "The thing
which strikes me most is your wonderful chivalry to women--especially
strange women."

They looked into one another's eyes and measured swords, and if she had
known it she had never so deeply attracted him before.

She had broached the subject of her return to England to her godmother,
who had laughed the idea to scorn, but now she spoke to Gritzko as if
it were an established fact.

"I go home from Moscow, you know," she said.

"You find our country too cold?" he asked.

"It is too full of contrasts, freezing one moment and thawing the next,
and while outside one is turned to ice, indoors one is consumed with
heat; it is upsetting to the equilibrium."

"All the same, you will not go," and he leaned back in the chair with
his provoking lazy smile.

"Indeed, I shall."

"We shall see. There are a number of things for you to learn yet."

"What things?"

The Prince lit a cigarette. "The possibilities of the unknown fires you
have lit," he said. "You remember the night at the Sphinx, when we said
good-bye. I told you a proverb they have there about meeting before
dawn, and not parting until dawn. Well, that dawn has not arrived yet.
And I have no intention--for the moment--that it shall arrive."

Tamara felt excited, and as ever his tone of complete omnipotence
annoyed her. At the same time to see him sitting there, his eyes fixed
with deep interest on her face, thrilled and exalted her. Oh! she
certainly loved him! Alas! and it would be dreadfully difficult to say
good-bye. But those three words in his sentence stung her pride--"for
the moment." Yes, there was always this hint of caprice. Always he gave
her the sensation of instability, there was no way to hold him. She
must ever guard her emotions and ever be ready to fence.

And now that she had taken a resolve to go home, to linger no more, she
was free to tease him as much as she could. To feel that she could,
gave her a fillip, and added a fresh charm to her face.

"You think you can rule the whole world to your will, Prince," she said.

"I can rule the part of it I want, as you will find," he retorted
fiercely. She made a pouting moue and tapped her little foot, then she
laughed.

"How amusing it would be if you happened to be mistaken this time," she
cooed. Then she rapidly turned to the Princess Sonia, who had just come
in, and they all talked of the great ball which was to take place in
the house in a week. The first after the period of the deep mourning.

"We cannot yet wear colors, but whites and grays and mauves--and won't
it be a relief from all this black," Princess Sonia said.

When they had all gone and Tamara was dressing for dinner, she felt
decidedly less depressed. She had succeeded better than she had hoped.
She had contrived to outwit the Prince, when he had plainly shown his
intention was to continue talking to her, she had turned from one to
another, and finally sat down by a handsome Chevalier Garde. In
companies she had a chance, but when they were alone!--however, that
was simple, because she must arrange that they should never be alone.




CHAPTER XIII


It was perhaps a fortunate thing that for three days after this the
Prince was kept at his military duties at Tsarsköi-Sélo, and could not
come to Petersburg, for he was in a mood that could easily mean
mischief. Tamara also was inclined to take things in no docile spirit.

She felt very unhappy, underneath her gay exterior. It was not
agreeable to her self-respect to realize she was fleeing from a place
because she loved a man whose actions showed he did not entertain the
same degree of feeling for her. No amount of attention from any other
quite salved that ever-constant inward hurt.

She went often through strange moments. In the middle of a casual
conversation suddenly back would come a wave of remembrance of the dawn
drive in the troika, and she would actually quiver with physical
emotion as the vivid recollection of the bliss of it would sweep over
her.

Then she would clench her hands and determine more fiercely than ever
to banish such memories. But with all her will, hardly for ten minutes
at a time could she keep Gritzko from her thoughts. His influence over
her was growing into an obsession.

She wondered why he did not come. She would not ask her godmother. The
three days passed in a feverish, gnawing unrest; and on the third
evening they went to the ballet again.

Opposite them, in a box, a very dark young woman was seated. She had a
hard, determined face, and she was well dressed, and not too covered
with jewels.

"That is a celebrated lady," Count Valonne said. "You must look at her,
Madame Loraine; she was one of the best dancers at the ballet, and last
year she tried to commit suicide in a charmingly dramatic way at one of
Gritzko's parties. She was at the time perhaps his _chère amie_--one
never knows, but in all cases violently in love with him--and is still,
for the matter of that--or so it is said--and in the middle of rather a
wild feast he was giving for her, she suddenly drank off some poison,
after making the terrifying announcement of her intention! We were all
petrified with horror, but he remained quite calm, and, seizing her, he
poured a whole bottle of salad oil down her throat, and then sent for a
doctor!--Of course the poor lady recovered, and the romantic end was
quite _raté!_--She was perfectly furious, one heard--and married a rich
slate merchant the week after. Wasn't it like Gritzko? He said the
affair was vulgar, and he sent her a large diamond bracelet, and never
spoke to her again!"

Tamara felt her cheeks burn--and her pride galled her more than ever.
So she and the ex-dancer were in the same boat?--but she at least would
not try to commit suicide and be restored by--salad oil!

"How perfectly ridiculous!" she said, with rather a bitter little
laugh. "What complete bathos!"

"It was unfortunate, was it not?" Valonne went on, and he glanced at
Tamara sideways.

He guessed that she was interested in the Prince; but Valonne was a
charming creature with an understanding eye, and in their set was in
great request. He knew exactly the right thing to talk about to each
different person, as a perfect diplomat should, and he was too tactful
and sympathetic to tease poor Tamara. On the contrary, he told her
casually that Gritzko had been on some duty these three days, in case
she did not know it.

From the beginning Tamara always had liked Valonne.

Then into the box came the same good-looking Chevalier Garde, Count
Varishkine, whom she had talked to on the last occasion of Gritzko's
visit, and the spirit of hurt pride caused her to be most gracious with
him. Meanwhile the Princess Ardácheff watched her with a faint
sensation of uneasiness, and at last whispered to Stephen Strong:

"Does not my godchild seem to be developing new characteristics,
Stephen? She is so very stately and quiet; and yet to-night it would
almost seem she is being flirtatious with Boris Varishkine.--I trust we
shall have no complications. What do you think?"

Mr. Strong laughed.

"It will depend upon how much it angers Gritzko. It could come to mean
anything--bloodshed, a scandal, or merely bringing things to a crisis
between them.--Let us hope, for the latter."

"Indeed, yes."

"You must remember, for an Englishwoman it would be very difficult to
grasp all the possibilities in the character of Gritzko. We are not
accustomed to these tempestuous headlong natures in our calm country."

"Fortunately Boris and Gritzko are very great friends."

"I never heard that the warmest friendship prevented jealousy between
men," Stephen Strong said, a little cynically--he had suffered a good
deal in his youth.

"I am delighted we are going to Moscow. There will be no Boris, and I
shall arrange for my two children to be together as much as possible. I
feel that is the surest way," the Princess answered; and they talked of
other things.

After the ballet was over the party went on to supper at Cubat's in a
private room, contrary to the Princess' custom. But it was Stephen
Strong's entertainment, and he had no house to invite them to.

As they passed down the passage to their salon the door of another
opened as a waiter came out, and loud laughter and clatter of glass
burst forth, and above the din one shrill girl's treble screamed:

"Gritzko! Oh, Gritzko!"

The food nearly choked Tamara when they reached their room, and supper
began. It was not, of course, a heinous crime for the Prince to be
entertaining ladies of another world. But on the top of everything else
it raised a wild revolt in her heart, and a raging disgust with
herself. Never, never should she unbend to him again. She _would not_
love him.

Alas! for the impotency of human wills! Only the demonstrations of love
can be controlled, the emotion itself comes from heaven--or hell, and
is omnipotent. Poor Tamara might as well have determined to keep the
sun from rising as to keep herself from loving Gritzko.

She was quite aware that men--even the nicest men--like Jack and her
brother Tom, sometimes went out with people she would not care to know;
but to have the fact brought under her very observation disgusted her
fine senses. To realize that the man she loved was at the moment
perhaps kissing some ordinary woman, revolted and galled her
immeasurably. But if she had known it this night, at least, the Prince
was innocent. He had strolled into that room with some brother
officers, and was not the giver of the feast. And a few minutes after
Mr. Strong's party had begun their repast he opened the door.

"May I come in, Stephen?" he asked. "I heard you were all here, Serge
saw you. I have just arrived from Tsarsköi, and must eat."

And of course he was warmly welcomed and pressed to take a seat, while
Valonne chaffed him in an undertone about the joys he had precipitately
left.

Tamara's face was the picture of disdain. But the Prince sat beside her
godmother, apparently unconcerned. He did not trouble to address her
specially, and before the end of supper, in spite of rage and disgust
and anger--and shame, she was longing for him to talk to her.

The only consolation she had was once when they went out, as she looked
up sweetly at Count Varishkine she caught a fierce expression stealing
over Gritzko's face.

So even though he did not love her really he could still feel jealous;
that was something, at all events!

Thus in these paltry rages and irritations, these two human beings
passed the next three days--when their real souls were capable of
something great.

Prince Milaslávski, to every one's surprise, appeared continuously in
the world.

Tamara and the Princess met him everywhere, and while the Princess did
her best to throw them together, Tamara maneuvered so that not once
could he speak to her alone, while she was assiduously charming to
every one else. Now it was old Prince Miklefski or Stephen Strong, now
one of the husbands, or Jack, and just often enough to give things a
zest she was bewitching to the handsome Chevalier Garde.

And the strange, fierce light in Gritzko's eyes did not decrease.

The night before the Ardácheff ball they were going to a reception at
one of the Embassies for a foreign King and Queen, who were paying a
visit to the Court, and Tamara dressed with unusual care, and fastened
her high tiara in her soft brown hair.

The Prince should see her especially attractive, she thought.

But when they arrived at the great house and walked among the brilliant
throng no Prince was to be seen!--It might be he had no intention to
come.

Presently Tamara went off to the refreshment room with her friend
Valonne.

The conversation turned to Gritzko with an easy swing.

He seemed on the brink of one of his maddest fits. Valonne had seen him
in the club just before dinner.

"If you really go to England I think he will follow you, Madame," he
said.

"How ridiculous!" and Tamara laughed. "How can it make a difference to
him whether I go or no? We do not exist for one another," and she
fanned herself rather rapidly, while Valonne smiled a fine smile.

"I should not be quite sure of that," he said. "If I might predict, I
should say you will be lucky if you get away from here without being
the cause of a duel of some sort."

"A duel!" Tamara was startled. "How dreadful, and how silly! But why? I
thought dueling had quite gone out in all civilized countries; and in
any case, why fight about me? And who should fight? Surely you are only
teasing me, Count Valonne."

"Duels are real facts here, I am afraid," he said. "Gritzko has already
engaged in two of them. He is not quarrelsome, but just never permits
any one to cross his wishes or interfere with his game."

"But what _is_ his game? You speak as though it were some kind of cards
or plot. What do you mean?" and Tamara, with heightened color, lifted
her head.

"The game of Gritzko?" and Count Valonne laughed. "Frankly, I think he
is very much in love with you, Madame," he said. "So by that you can
guess what would be any man's game."

"You have a vivid imagination, and are talking perfect nonsense."
Tamara laughed nervously. "I refuse to be the least upset by such
ideas!"

At that moment up came Count Boris Varishkine, and after a while she
went off with him to a sofa by the window, and there was seated in deep
converse when the Prince came in.

He looked at them for a second and then made straight for the Princess
Ardácheff, who was just about to arrange her rubber of bridge.

"Tantine, I want to talk to you," he said.

And the Princess at once left the cardroom and returned with him. They
found a quiet corner opposite Tamara and her Garde, and there sat down.

"Tantine, I brought you here to look over there.--What does that mean?"

The Princess put up her glasses to gain time.

"Nothing, dear boy. Tamara is merely amusing herself like all the rest
of us at a party. Are you jealous, Gritzko?" she asked.

He looked at her sharply, and for a moment unconsciously fingered the
dagger in his belt.

"Yes, I believe I am jealous. I am not at all sure that I do not love
your charming friend," he said.

"Well, why don't you marry her then?" suggested the Princess.

"Perhaps I shall--if she does not drive me to doing something mad
first. I don't know what I intend. It may be to go off to the Caucasus,
or to stay and make her love me so deeply that she will forgive me--no
matter what I do."

He paused a moment, and his great eyes filled with mist, and then the
wild light grew.

"If ever she becomes my Princess, she shall be entirely for me. I will
not let her have a look or thought for any other man. All must be
mine--unshared, and then she shall be my queen."

Princess Ardácheff leant back and looked at him. He was in his blue
uniform with the scarlet underdress; and even she--old woman and fond
friend--could not help picturing the gorgeous joy such a fate would
give--to have him for a lover! to see his fierce, proud head bent in
devotion, to feel his tender caress. Tamara must be an unutterable fool
if she should hesitate.

But what he had said was not reassuring in its prospect of calm. She
felt she must put in some small word of admonition.

"You will be careful won't you, Gritzko?" she ventured to suggest.
"Remember, Tamara is an Englishwoman, and not accustomed to your ways."

"It will depend upon herself," he said. "If she goes on teasing me I do
not know what I shall do. If she does not--"

"You will be good?"

"Possibly. But one thing, Tantine, I will not be interfered with either
by her friend the Englishman or Boris Varishkine."

At this moment Tamara looked up and caught the two pairs of eyes fixed
upon her. And into her spirit flowed a devilment.--Duels! They were all
nonsense. She should certainly play a little with her new friend.

In her whole life before she came to Russia she had never been really
flirtatious. She was in no way a coquette, rather a simple creature who
recked little of men. But the simplest woman develops feline qualities
under certain provocation; and her pride was deeply hurt.

Count Boris Varishkine asked nothing better than to fall in with her
views. He was, however, like most of his countrymen, sincere, and not
merely passing the time.

Jack Courtray came up, too, and joined them, his Countess Olga had sent
him temporarily from her side. And Tamara scintillated and sparkled as
she talked to them both in a way which surprised herself.

This society was very diplomatic, and it amused her to watch the
representatives of the different nations--the English and the Russians
standing out as so much the finest men.

Presently the little group was joined by Stephen Strong.

"Isn't this an amusing party, Mrs. Loraine?" he said.

"Yes," said Tamara. "And I am beginning to be able to place the members
of the different countries. Don't you think the Russians look much the
most like us, Mr. Strong?"

"The Russians, dear lady? When you have traveled a little more you will
see that term covers half the types of the earth--but I agree. What we
see here in Petersburg are very much like us--a trifling difference in
the way the eyes are set, and the way the hair is brushed; and, given
the same uniforms, half these smart young men might be our English
Guards."

"We do not resemble you in character, though," said Count Varishkine.
"You can feel just what you like, or not at all, whereas we are
storm-tossed, and have not yet learnt the arts of pretence."

"We're a deuced cold-blooded race, aren't we, Tamara?" Jack Courtray
said, and he grinned his happy grin.

The little party looked so merry and content Princess Ardácheff hardly
liked to disturb them, but was impelled to by a look in Gritzko's face.

"Tamara, dear," she said, as she joined them, "I am so very tired after
last night, for once shall we go home reasonably early?"

And Tamara rose gladly to her feet.

"Of course, Marraine, I too am dropping with fatigue," she said.

The Prince spoke a few words to Stephen Strong, and Jack joined in; so
that the three were a pace or so to one side when the two ladies wished
them goodnight.

"Come and see me early tomorrow, Jack," Tamara said. "I want to show
you Tom's letter from home," and she looked up with an alluring smile,
feeling the Prince was watching her; then, turning to Count Boris, "I
am sure you will regret your bargain in having asked me to dance the
Mazurka tomorrow night," she said. "I do not know a single figure or a
step--but I hope we shall have some fun. I am looking forward to it."

"More than fun!" the young man said, with devotion, as he kissed her
hand.

Then they walked to say goodnight to the hostess, and Gritzko seemed to
disappear. But when they got down into the hall they saw him already in
his furs.

The Princess' footman began to hand Tamara her snowboots and cloak, but
Gritzko almost snatched them from the man's hand. She made no protest,
but let him help her to put them on and wrap her up, while her
godmother thought it advisable to walk toward the door.

"Tonight was your moment, Madame," he said, in a low voice. "But the
gods are often kind to me, and my hour will come!"

Tamara summoned everything she knew of provokingness into her face as
she looked up and answered:

"Tant pis! et bon soir! Monsieur le démon de Lermontoff!"

Then she felt it prudent to run quickly after the Princess and get into
the automobile!




CHAPTER XIV


It was twenty-four hours later. The night of the Ardácheff ball had
come. The glorious house made the background of a festive scene. The
company waited all round the galleries for the arrival of the Grand
Dukes and the foreign King and Queen.

And Tamara stood by her godmother's side at the top of the stairs, a
strange excitement flooding her veins.

Since the night before they had heard nothing of the Prince. And as
each guest came in view, past the splendid footmen grouped like statues
on every six steps, both women watched with quickening pulses for one
insouciant Cossack face.

The Royalties arrived in a gorgeous train, and yet neither Gritzko nor
Count Varishkine.

It might mean nothing, but it was curious all the same. The opening
_contre-danse_ was in full swing, and still they never came, and by the
time of the second valse after it Tamara was a prey to a vague fear.
While the Princess' uneasiness grew more than vague.

Tamara could not enjoy herself. She talked at random, she made her
partners continually promenade through the salons, and her eyes
constantly scanned the doors.

The immense ballroom, quite two stories high, presented a brilliant
sight with its stately decorations of the time of Alexander I. And all
the magnificent jewels and uniforms, and the flowers. Somehow a riot of
roses takes an extra charm when outside the thermometer measures zero.
And no one would have believed, looking at this dignified throng, that
they could be the same people who could frolic wildly at a Bohemian
supper.

There is a great deal in breeding, after all, and the knowledge of the
fitness of things which follows in its train.

Tamara was valsing with Jack Courtray, and they stopped to look at the
world.

"Are they not a wonderful people, Jack? Could anything be more decorous
and dignified than they are tonight? And yet if you watch, in the
_contre-danse_ their eyes have the same excited look as when we wildly
capered after supper in Prince Milaslávski's house."

"Which reminds me--why is he not here?" asked Jack.

"I wish I knew," Tamara said. "Jack, be a dear and go and forage about
and get hold of Serge Grekoff, if you can see him, or Mr. Strong, or
Sasha Basmanoff, or some one who might know--but it seems as if none of
them are here."

"As interested as that?" and Lord Courtray laughed. "Well, my child,
I'll do my best," so he relinquished her for the next turn and left her
with Valonne, who had just arrived.

"Apparently I shall have to go partnerless for the Mazurka," Tamara
carelessly said while she watched the Frenchman's face with the corner
of her eye. "I was engaged for it to Count Varishkine, and he has never
turned up. I do wonder what has happened to him. Do you know?"

"I told you you would be lucky if you got away from here without some
row of sorts, Madame," and Valonne smiled enigmatically.

"What do you mean? Please tell me?" and Tamara turned pale.

"I mean nothing; only I fancy you will only see one of them tonight;
which it will be is still on the cards."

A cold, sick feeling came over Tamara.

"You are not insinuating that they have been fighting?" she asked, with
a tremble in her voice which she could not control.

But Valonne reassured her.

"I am insinuating nothing," he said, with a calm smile. "Let us have
one more turn before this charming valse stops."

And, limp and nerveless, Tamara allowed herself to be whirled around
the room; nor could she get anything further out of Valonne.

When it was over she sought in vain for her godmother or Jack or
Stephen Strong. The Princess was engaged with the Royalties and could
not be approached, and neither of the men were to be seen.

The next half-hour was agony, in which, with a white face and fixed
smile, Tamara played her part, and then just before the Mazurka was
going to begin Gritzko came in.

It seemed as if her knees gave way under her for a moment, and she sat
down in a seat. The relief was so great. Whatever had happened he at
least was safe.

She watched him securing two chairs in the best place, and then he
crossed over to where she sat by the door to the refreshment room.

"Bon soir, Madame," he said. "Will you take me as a substitute for your
partner, Count Varishkine?" and he bowed with a courtly grace which
seemed suited to the scene. "He is, I regret to say, slightly
indisposed, and has asked me to crave your indulgence for him, and let
me fill his place."

For a moment Tamara hesitated; she seemed to have lost the power of
speech; she felt she must control her anxiety and curiosity, so at last
she answered gravely:

"I am so very sorry! I hope it is nothing serious. He is so charming,
Count Varishkine."

"Nothing serious. Shall we take our places? I have two chairs there not
far from Olga and your friend," and the Prince prepared to lead the
way. Tamara, now that the tension was over, almost thought she would
refuse, but the great relief and joy she felt in his presence overcame
her pride, and she meekly followed him across the room.

They passed the Princess on the way, and as she apparently gave some
laughing reply to the Ambassador she was with, she hurriedly whispered
in Tamara's ear:

"Pour l'amour de Dieu! Be careful with Gritzko tonight, my child."

When they were seated waiting for the dance to begin Tamara noticed
that the Prince was very pale, and that his eyes, circled with blue
shadows, seemed to flame.

The certainty grew upon her that some mysterious tragic thing had taken
place; but, frightened by the Princess' words, she did not question him.

She hardly spoke, and he was silent, too. It seemed as though now he
had gained his end and secured her as a partner it was all he meant to
do.

Presently he turned to her and asked lazily:

"Have you been amused since the Moravian reception? How have you passed
the time? I have been at Tsarsköi again, and could not come to see
Tantine."

"We have been quite happy, thanks, Prince," Tamara said. "Jack Courtray
and I have spent the day studying the lovely things in the Hermitage.
We must see what we can before we both go home."

Gritzko looked at her.

"I like him--he is a good fellow--your friend," and then he added
reflectively: "But if he spends too much time with you I hope the bears
will eat him!"

This charitable wish was delivered in a grave, quiet voice, as though
it had been a blessing.

"How horrible you are!" Tamara flashed. "Jack to be eaten by bears!
Poor dear old Jack! What has he done?"

"Nothing, I hope,--as yet; but time will tell. Now we must begin to
danc

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