The Dark Star

Perhaps they both were thinking of this rather ancient episode now,

for his face was touched with a mischievously reminiscent smile, and

she had lowered her head a trifle over the keyboard where her slim,

ivory-tinted hands still idly searched after elusive harmonies in the

subdued light of the single lamp.

"There's a man dining with us," she remarked, "who has the same

irresponsible and casual views on life and manners which you

entertain. No doubt you'll get along very well together."

"Who is he?"

"A Captain Sengoun, one of our attachés. It's likely you'll find a

congenial soul in this same Cossack whom we all call Alak." She added

maliciously: "His only logic is the impulse of the moment, and he is

known as Prince Erlik among his familiars. Erlik was the Devil, you

know----"

He was announced at that moment, and came marching in--a dark,

handsome, wiry young man with winning black eyes and a little black

moustache just shadowing his short upper lip--and a head shaped to

contain the devil himself--the most reckless looking head, Neeland

thought, that he ever had beheld in all his life.

But the young fellow's frank smile was utterly irresistible, and his

straight manner of facing one, and of looking directly into the eyes

of the person he addressed in his almost too perfect English, won any

listener immediately.

He bowed formally over Princess Naïa's hand, turned squarely on

Neeland when he was named to the American, and exchanged a firm clasp

with him. Then, to the Princess: "I am late? No? Fancy, Princess--that great booby, Izzet Bey, must

stop me at the club, and I exceedingly pressed to dress and entirely

out of humour with all Turks. 'Eh bien, mon vieux!' said he in his

mincing manner of a nervous pelican, 'they're warming up the Balkan

boilers with Austrian pine. But I hear they're full of snow.' And I

said to him: 'Snow boils very nicely if the fire is sufficiently

persistent!' And I think Izzet Bey will find it so!"--with a quick

laugh of explanation to Neeland: "He meant Russian snow, you see; and

that boils beautifully if they keep on stoking the boiler with

Austrian fuel."

The Princess shrugged: "What schoolboy repartée! Why did you answer him at all, Alak?"

"Well," explained the attaché, "as I was due here at eight I hadn't

time to take him by the nose, had I?"

Rue Carew entered and went to the Princess to make amends: "I'm so sorry to be late!"--turned to smile at Neeland, then offered

her hand to the Russian. "How do you do, Prince Erlik?" she said with

the careless and gay cordiality of old acquaintance. "I heard you say

something about Colonel Izzet Bey's nose as I came in."