Tamara felt perfectly happy, she was no longer analyzing and questioning, and she was no longer fighting against her inclination. She abandoned herself to the rushing stream of life.
It was about five o'clock when some one suggested supper at the Islands was now the proper thing. This was the delightful part about them—on no occasion was there ever a halt for the consideration of ways and means. They wanted some particular amusement and—had it! Convention, from an English point of view, remained an unknown quantity.—Now those who decided to continue the feasting all got into their waiting conveyances.
With the thermometer at fifteen degrees Reaumur, a coachman's life is not one altogether to be envied in Russia, but apparently custom will make anything endurable.
"I know you like the troika, Tamara," Princess Ardácheff said. "So you go with Olga and Gritzko and your friend—only be sure you wrap up your head."
And when they were all getting in, the Countess Gléboff said:
"It is so terribly cold tonight, Gritzko. I am going to sit with my back to the horses, so as not to get the wind in my face."
When they were tucked in under the furs this arrangement seemed to Jack
Courtray one of real worth, for he instantly proceeded to take Countess
Olga's hand, while he whispered that he was cold and she could not be
so inhuman as to let a poor stranger freeze!
It seemed amusing to look from the windows of a private room, down upon a gay supping throng, in the general salle at the restaurant on the Islands, while Tziganes played and their supper was being prepared.
"Who could think it was five o'clock in the morning! What a lesson for our rotten old County Council in London," Jack Courtray said. "By Jove! this is the place for me!" and he proceeded to make violent love to Olga Gléboff, to whose side he remained persistently glued.
And then the gayest repast began; nothing could have been more entertaining or full of wild entrain, and yet no one over-did it, or was vulgar or coarse.