Part 7 (1/2)

”You hardly look any more--twenty, perhaps, and--never kissed!”

A memory rose up of a scorched neck, and suddenly Tamara's long eyelashes rested on her cheek.

Then into his splendid eyes came a fierce, savage, pa.s.sionate gleam, which she did not see, but dimly felt, and he said in a low voice a little thick:

”And--as--yet--never really kissed.”

”Milly,” said Tamara, as calmly as she could, ”what time do we get into Brindisi to-morrow morning? And think of it, on Thursday night we shall be at home.”

Home seemed so very safe!

The Prince did not come in to luncheon, something was the matter with his Arab horse, and he had gone to see to it just before--a concern on his face as of the news of illness to his nearest kin.

Tamara was gay and charming, and laughed with Stephen Strong and the captain in quite an unusual way for her. They both thought her an adorable woman. Poor Tamara! and so she really was.

About tea-time Prince Milaslavski turned up again.

”He is all right now,” he said, sure that his listeners were in perfect sympathy with him. ”It was those fools down there. I have made them suffer, I can say,” and then he turned to Stephen Strong. ”Among the steerage there is an Alexandrian gipsy troupe. I have ordered them up to sing to us to-night, since Madame wished it,” and he turned upon Millicent an air of deep devotion.

”Common ragged creatures, but one with some ankles and one with a voice. In any case, we must celebrate these ladies' last night.”

And thus the terrible present end to their acquaintance fell about!

Nothing could have been more charming than the Prince was until dinner-time, and indeed through that meal, only he made Stephen Strong change places with him, so that he might be next Mrs. Hardcastle, much to that lady's delight.

”He is really too fascinating,” she said, as she came into Tamara's cabin to fetch her for the evening meal. ”I hardly think Henry would like his devotion to me. What do you think, dear?”

”I am sure he would be awfully jealous, Milly darling; you really must be careful,” Tamara said. And with a conscious air of complacent pleasantly tickled virtue Mrs. Hardcastle led the way to the saloon.

It was not possible, Tamara thought, that anything so terribly unpleasant as the Prince's having too much champagne at dinner, could have accounted for his simply scandalous behavior after; and yet surely that would have been the kindest thing to say. But, no, it was not that.

This was, in brief, the scene which was enacted on the upper deck:

With the permission of the captain, the gipsy troupe were brought, and began their performance, tame enough at the commencement until the Prince gave orders for them to be supplied with unlimited champagne, and then the wildest dancing began. They writhed and gesticulated and undulated in a manner which made Millicent cling on to her chair, grow crimson in the face, and finally start to her feet.

But the worst happened when the Prince rose and, taking a tambourine, began, with a weird shriek, to beat it wildly, his eyes ablaze and his lips apart.

Then, seizing the chief dancer and banging it upon her head, he held his arm about her heaving breast, as she turned to him with a serpentine movement of voluptuous delight.

In a second he had caught hold of her, and had lifted and swung her far out over the dark blue waters, then, with a swirl to the side, held her suspended in the air above the open deck below.

”Ha, ha!” yelled the troupe, in frenzied pleasure, and, nimble as a cat, one rough dark man rushed down the ladder and caught the hanging woman in his arms. Then they all clapped and cheered and shrieked with joy, while the Prince, putting his hands in his pockets, pulled out heaps of gold and flung it among them.

”Back to h.e.l.l, rats!” he shouted, laughing. ”See, you have frightened the ladies. You should all be killed!”

For Tamara and Millicent had risen, and with stately steps had quitted the scene.

It was all too terrible and too vulgarly melodramatic, Tamara thought, especially that touching of the woman and that flinging of the gold, the latter caused by the same barbaric instinct which made him throw the silver in the Sheikh's village by the moonlit Sphinx, only this was worse a thousandfold.