It was an immense apartment with a great porcelain stove at one corner, and panelled with wood, and it suggested to Tamara, for no sane reason, something of an orthodox church! One end was bare, and the other carpeted with great Persian rugs, had huge divans spread about; there was an electric piano and an organ, and there were also crossed foils, and masks, and everything for a fencing bout.
The Prince went to the piano and started a valse. Then he came up to
Tamara and asked her to dance.
There was no trace left of his respectful friendliness! His sleepy eyes were blazing, he had never looked more oriental, or more savage, or more intense.
It was almost with a thrill of fear that Tamara yielded herself to his request. He clasped her so tightly she could hardly breathe, all she knew was she seemed to be floating in the air, and to be crushed against his breast.
"Prince, please, I am suffocating!" she cried at last.
Then he swung her off her feet, and stopped by an armchair, and Tamara subsided into it, panting, not able to speak. And all across her milk-white chest there were a row of red marks from the heavy silver cartridges, which cross in two rows in the Cossack dress.
"I would like those brands of me to last forever," the Prince said.
Tamara lay back in the chair a prey to tumultuous emotions. She ought to be disgusted she supposed, and of course she was—such an uncivilized horrible thought! but at the same time every nerve was tingling and her pulse was beating with the strange thrills she had only lately begun to dream of.
"Tamara! By jove! What have you done to your neck?" Jack Courtray said, as he came up.
And Tamara was glad she had a gauze scarf over her arm, which she wrapped around carelessly as she said: