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!"