His Hour

Tamara shivered slightly. She had the feeling known as a goose walking

over her grave.

"It is as if wild animals played here--hardly human beings," she said.

"Look at that cabinet, and the sofa, and--and--that picture! One cannot

help reflecting upon what caused those holes. One's imagination can

conjure up extraordinary things."

"Not more extraordinary than the probable facts," and Valonne laughed

as if at some astonishing recollection. "You have not yet seen our

host's own rooms though, I expect?"

"Why?" asked Tamara. "But can they possibly be worse than this?"

"No, that is just it. He had them done up by one of your English firms,

and they are beautifully comfortable and correct. His sitting-room is

full of books, and a few good pictures, and leads into his bedroom and

dressing-room; and as for the bathroom it is as perfect as any the best

American plumber could invent!"

Valonne had spent years at Washington, and in England too, and spoke

English almost as a native.

"He is the most remarkable contrast of wildness and civilization I have

ever met."

"It always seems to me as though he were trying to crush something--to

banish something in himself," said Tamara. "As though he did these wild

things to forget."

"It is the limitless nature warring against an impossible bar. If he

were an Englishman he would soar to be one of the greatest of your

country, Madame," Valonne said. "You have not perhaps talked to him

seriously; he is extraordinarily well read; and then on some point that

we of the Occident have known as children, he will be completely

ignorant, but he never bores one! Nothing he does makes one feel heavy

like lead!"

Tamara looked so interested, Valonne went on.

"These servants down here absolutely idolize him; they have all been in

the house since he or they were born. For them he can do no wrong. He

has a gymnasium, and he keeps two or three of them to exercise him, and

wrestle with him, and last year Basil, the second one, put his master's

shoulder out of joint, and then tried to commit suicide with remorse.

You can't, until you have been here a long time, understand their

strange natures. So easily moved to passion, so fierce and barbaric,

and yet so full of sentiment and fidelity. I firmly believe if he were

to order them to set fire to us all in our beds tonight, they would do

it without a word! He is their personal 'Little Father.' For them there

is a trinity to worship and respect--the Emperor, God, and their

Master."