His Hour

There was hardly twilight and the ship's electric lights were already

being lit. The old Englishman, Stephen Strong, greeted her and took the

chair at Mrs. Hardcastle's other side. That lady was in one of her

chatty moods, when each nicely expressed sentence fell from her lips

directly after the other--all so pleasant and easy to understand. No

one ever felt with Millicent he need use an atom of brain. These are

the women men like.

Tamara pretended to read her book, but she was conscious of the near

proximity of the Prince. Nothing so magnetic in the way of a

personality had ever crossed her path as yet.

He sat as still as a statue gazing at the sea. An uncontrollable desire

to look at him shook Tamara, but she dominated it. The discomfort at

last grew so great that she almost trembled.

Then he spoke: "Have you cat's eyes?" he asked.

Now, when there was a legitimate chance to look at him, she found her

orbs glued to her book.

"Of course not!" she said, icily.

"Then of what use to pretend you are reading in this gloom? The

miserable lantern is not good for a gleam."

Tamara was silent. She even turned a page. She would be irritating,

too!

"That ball was a sight," he continued. "Did you see the harem ladies

peeping from their cage? They looked fat and ugly enough to be wisely

kept there. What a lot of fools they must have thought us, cavorting

for their amusement."

"Poor women!" said Tamara. Her voice was the primmest thing in voices

she had ever heard.

"Why poor women?" he asked. "They have all the pleasures of the body,

and no anxieties; nothing but the little excitement of trying now and

then to poison their rivals! It is the poor Khedive!--Think of his

having to wade through all that fat mass to find one pretty one!"

The tone of this conversation displeased Tamara. She did not wish to

enter into the ethics of the harem. She wished he would be silent

again, only that deep voice of his was so pleasant! His English was

wonderful, too, with hardly the least accent; and when she did allow

herself to look at him she could not help admiring the way his hair

grew, back from a forehead purely Greek. His nose was short and rather

square, while those too beautifully chiseled lips of his had an

expression of extraordinary charm. His whole personality breathed

attraction, every human being who approached him was conscious of it.

As for his eyes, they were enormous, with broad full lids, mystical,

passionate, and yet unconcerned. Always they suggested something

Eastern, though on the whole he was fair. Tamara's own soft brown hair

was only a shade lighter than his.