"You are here since long, Madame?"
"No, Monsieur, only a few weeks, and I go to-morrow."
"Ah! you dance beautifully!"
"Do I? I am glad——"
The Russian Count held her very tightly, and they stopped quite out of breath, where the screened windows half-hid the poor ladies of the harem, who watched the throng from their safe retreat.
The Count bowed—and Tamara bowed. A section, not the whole dance, was evidently the Russian custom.
Then a voice said close to her ear:
"May I, too, have the honor of a turn, Madame?" and she looked up into the eyes of the Prince.
For a second she hesitated. Her first impulse was to scornfully say no, but she quickly realized that would be undignified and absurd; so she said yes, coldly, and let him place his arm about her. The band was playing a particularly sensuous valse, which drove all young people mad that year, and—if the Count had danced well—this man's movements were heaven. Tamara did not speak a word. She purposely did not look at him, but drooped her proud head so that the flashing diamonds of her tiara were all he could have seen of her.
He put no special meaning into the way he held her; he just danced divinely; but there was something in the creature himself of a perfectly annoying attractiveness—or so it seemed to Tamara.