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.