They went on chatting for some minutes about it. Tom asked if she had met his cousin out there; yes, she remembered vaguely a Mr. Winslowe coming to tea on her dahabieh once, but it was only when he described Tony more closely that she recalled him positively. 'He interested me,' she said then: 'he talked wildly, but rather picturesquely, about what he called the 'spiral movement of life,' or something.' 'He goes after birds,' Tom mentioned. 'Of course,' she replied, 'I remember distinctly now. It was something about the flight of birds that introduced the spiral part of it. He had a good deal in him, that man,' she added, 'but he hid it behind a lot of nonsense—almost purposely, I felt.'
'That's Tony all over,' Tom assented, 'but he's a rare good sort and I'm awfully fond of him. He's 'real' in our sense too, I think.'
She said then very slowly, as though her thoughts were far away in Egypt at the moment: 'Yes, I think he is. I've seen his face too.'
'Floating down, you mean—or on the bank?'
'Floating,' she answered. 'I'm sure I have.'
Tom laughed happily. 'Then you've got him to rescue too,' he said. 'But, remember, if we're both drowning, I come first.'
She looked into his face and smiled her answer, touching his fingers with her hand. And again it was not a woman's touch.
'He was in Warsaw, too, a few weeks ago,' Tom went on, 'so we were all three there together. Rather odd, you know. He was ski-ing with me in the Carpathians,'; and he described their meeting at Zakopané after the long interval since boyhood. 'He told me about you in Egypt, too, now I come to think of it. He mentioned the dahabieh, but called you a Russian—yes, I remember now,—and a Russian Princess into the bargain. Evidently you made less impression on Tony than——'
It was then he stopped as though he had been struck. The idle conversation changed. He heard her interrupting words from a curious distance. They fell like particles of ice upon his heart.
'Polish, of course, not Russian,' she mentioned casually, 'but the rest is right, though I never use the title. My husband, in his own country, is a Prince, you see.'