Nothing so magnetic in the way of a
personality had ever crossed her path as yet.
He sat as still as a statue gazing at the sea. An uncontrollable desire
to look at him shook Tamara, but she dominated it. The discomfort at
last grew so great that she almost trembled.
Then he spoke:
"Have you cat's eyes?" he asked.
Now, when there was a legitimate chance to look at him, she found her
orbs glued to her book.
"Of course not!" she said, icily.
"Then of what use to pretend you are reading in this gloom? The
miserable lantern is not good for a gleam."
Tamara was silent. She even turned a page. She would be irritating,
too!
"That ball was a sight," he continued. "Did you see the harem ladies
peeping from their cage? They looked fat and ugly enough to be wisely
kept there. What a lot of fools they must have thought us, cavorting
for their amusement."
"Poor women!" said Tamara. Her voice was the primmest thing in voices
she had ever heard.
"Why poor women?" he asked. "They have all the pleasures of the body,
and no anxieties; nothing but the little excitement of trying now and
then to poison their rivals! It is the poor Khedive!--Think of his
having to wade through all that fat mass to find one pretty one!"
The tone of this conversation displeased Tamara. She did not wish to
enter into the ethics of the harem. She wished he would be silent
again, only that deep voice of his was so pleasant! His English was
wonderful, too, with hardly the least accent; and when she did allow
herself to look at him she could not help admiring the way his hair
grew, back from a forehead purely Greek.
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