Dinner was an impossible penance, and with a feverish excitement she waited for the time when they should be alone.
It seemed an eternity before coffee was finished and the four retired to their bridge. Then the two passed out of the room and on into the blue salon.
It was extremely difficult for both of them. The Prince could scarcely control his mad longing to caress her. Only that strange turn in his character held him. Also the knowledge that once he were to grant himself an inch he could never restrain the whole of his wild passion, and there were yet five days before she should be really his--.
Tamara looked a white, frozen shape as she almost fell into the sofa below the Falconet group. Cupid with his laughing eyes peeped down and mocked her. Gritzko did not sit beside her. He took a chair and leant on a table near.
"We had good sport," he said dryly. "Your friend can hit things. We got two bears."
"Jack must have been pleased," Tamara answered dully.
"And your family--they arrive on Monday, isn't it?" he asked. "Your brother and sister and the estimable Mrs. Hardcastle?" and he laughed as he always did at the mention of Millicent. "They will wonder, won't they, why you are marrying this savage! but they will not know."
"No!" said Tamara. "They must never know." Gritzko's face became whimsical, a disconcerting, mischievous provoking smile stole into his eyes.
She looked up at him startled. It was her habit now never to meet his eyes. Indeed, the sense of humiliation under which she lived had changed all her fearless carriage of head.
"Why do you ask such questions? I might as well ask you why are you marrying me. We both know that we cannot help it," and there was a break in her voice which touched him profoundly.
"Answer for yourself please, I may have several other reasons," he said coldly, and got up and walked across the room picking up a bibelot here and there, and replacing it restlessly.
Tamara longed to ask him what these reasons were. She was stirred with a faint hope, but she had not the courage, the intensity of her feeling made her dumb.
"They--Tantine--or Sonia--have explained to you all the service, I suppose," he said at last. "It is different to yours in your country. It means much more--"