"Now tell us, Gritzko, what did you do in Egypt this year?" Princess
Sonia said. "It is the first time that no histories of your ways have
come to our ears--were you ill?--or bored? We feared you were dead."
"On the contrary, I was greatly alive," he answered gravely. "I was
studying mummies and falling in love with the Sphinx. And just at the
end I had a most interesting kind of experience; I came upon what
looked like a woman, but turned out to be a mummy and later froze into
a block of ice!"
"Gritzko!" they called in chorus. "Can anyone invent such impossible
stories as you!"
"I assure you I am speaking the truth. Is it not so, Madame?" And he
looked at Tamara and smiled with fleeting merry mockery in his eyes.
"See," and he again turned to his guests, "Madame has been in Egypt she
tells me, and should be able to vouch for my truth."
Tamara pulled herself together.
"I think the Sphinx must have cast a spell over you, Prince," she said,
"so that you could not distinguish the real from the false. I saw no
women who were mummies and then turned into ice!"
Some one distracted Princess Sonia's attention for a moment, and the
Prince whispered, "One can melt ice!"
"To find a mummy?" Tamara asked with grave innocence. "That would be
the inverse rotation."
"And lastly a woman--in one's arms," the Prince said.
Tamara turned to her neighbor and became engrossed in his conversation
for the rest of the repast.
All the women, and nearly all the men, spoke English perfectly, and
their good manners were such that even this large party talked in the
strange guest's language among themselves.
"One must converse now as long as one can," her neighbor told her,
"because the moment we have had coffee everyone will play bridge, and
no further sense will be got out of them. We are a little behind the
rest of the world always in Petersburg, and while in England and Paris
this game has had its day, here we are still in its claws to a point of
madness, as Madame will see."
And thus it fell about.
Prince Milaslávski gave Tamara his arm and they found coffee awaiting
them in the salon when they returned there, and at once the rubbers
were made up. And with faces of grave pre-occupation this lately merry
company sat down to their game, leaving only the Prince and one lady
and Tamara unprovided for.