His Hour

"Tom!" almost gasped Miss Underdown. "Your manners are extremely

displeasing, and the tone of your remarks is far from what one could

wish!"

Meanwhile Tamara was speeding on her way to the North, her interest and

excitement in her journey deepening with each mile.

The snow and the vast forests impressed her from the train windows.

Every smallest shade made its effect upon her brain. Tamara was

sensitive to all form and color. She was a person who apprehended

things, and from the habit of keeping all her observations to herself

perhaps the faculty of perception had grown the keener.

The silence seemed to be the first thing she remarked on reaching the

frontier. The porters were so grave and quiet, with their bearded

kindly faces, many of them like the saints and Biblical characters in

Sunday-school picture books at home.

And finally she arrived at St. Petersburg, and found her godmother

waiting for her on the platform. They recognized each other

immediately. Tamara had several photographs of the Princess Ardácheff.

"Welcome, ma filleule," that lady cried, while she shook her hand.

"After all these years I can have you in my house."

They said all sorts of mutually agreeable things on their way thither,

and they looked at each other shyly.

"She is not beautiful," ran the Princess' comments. "Though she has a

superb air of breeding--that is from her poor mother--but her eyes are

her father's eyes. She is very sweet, and what a lovely skin--yes, and

eyelashes--and probably a figure when one can see beneath the furs--

tall and very slender in any case. Yes, I am far from disappointed--

far."

And Tamara thought: "My godmother is a splendid looking lady! I like her bright brown eyes

and that white hair; and what a queer black mole upon her left cheek,

like an early eighteenth-century beauty spot. Where have I heard lately

of someone with a mole------?

"You fortunately see our city with a fresh mantle of snow, Tamara," the

Princess said, glancing from the automobile window as they sped along.

"It is not, alas! always so white as this."

It appeared wonderful to Tamara--so quite unlike anything she had

imagined. The tiny sleighs seemingly too ridiculously small for the

enormously padded coachman on the boxes--the good horses with their

sweeping tails--the unusual harness. And, above all, again the silence

caused by the snow.

Her first remark was almost a childish one of glee and appreciation,

and then she stopped short. What would her godmother think of such an

outburst! She must return to the contained self-repression of the time

before her visit to the Sphinx--surely in this strange land!