"
"In England," said Tamara, "what may be given to young girls seems to
rule everything, no one is allowed a thought for herself, every idea
almost is brought down to that dead level--one rebels after a while--
but tell me, Marraine, if I may ask, what makes them all so tired and
gray looking, the people I have seen tonight I mean. Do they sit up
very late at parties, or what is it?"
"In the season, yes, but it is not that, it is our climate and our hot
closed-up rooms, and the impossibility of taking proper exercise. In
the summer you will not know them for the same faces."
And then she kissed her goddaughter good-night, but just at the door
she paused. "You were not shocked about the Alexandrian dancers, I
hope, child?" she said. "If one knew the truth, they were poor people
who were starving, probably, and Gritzko paid them money and helped
them out of the kindness of his heart--those are the sort of things he
generally does I find when I investigate, so I never pay attention to
what he says."
Tamara, left to herself, gazed into the glowing embers of her wood
fire.
"I wonder--I wonder," she said. But what she wondered she hardly dared
admit--even to herself.
CHAPTER VII
The next day was the last of the Russian old year--the 13th of January
new style--and when Tamara appeared about ten o'clock in her
godmother's own sitting-room, a charming apartment full of the most
interesting miniatures and bibelots collected by the great Ard?cheff,
friend of Catherine II.
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