"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."
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.