"It will depend upon how much it angers Gritzko. It could come to mean anything—bloodshed, a scandal, or merely bringing things to a crisis between them.—Let us hope, for the latter."
"Indeed, yes."
"You must remember, for an Englishwoman it would be very difficult to grasp all the possibilities in the character of Gritzko. We are not accustomed to these tempestuous headlong natures in our calm country."
"Fortunately Boris and Gritzko are very great friends."
"I never heard that the warmest friendship prevented jealousy between men," Stephen Strong said, a little cynically—he had suffered a good deal in his youth.
"I am delighted we are going to Moscow. There will be no Boris, and I shall arrange for my two children to be together as much as possible. I feel that is the surest way," the Princess answered; and they talked of other things.
After the ballet was over the party went on to supper at Cubat's in a private room, contrary to the Princess' custom. But it was Stephen Strong's entertainment, and he had no house to invite them to.
As they passed down the passage to their salon the door of another opened as a waiter came out, and loud laughter and clatter of glass burst forth, and above the din one shrill girl's treble screamed:
"Gritzko! Oh, Gritzko!"
The food nearly choked Tamara when they reached their room, and supper began. It was not, of course, a heinous crime for the Prince to be entertaining ladies of another world. But on the top of everything else it raised a wild revolt in her heart, and a raging disgust with herself. Never, never should she unbend to him again. She would not love him.