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."
"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.