Then a voice said close to her ear:

"May I, too, have the honor of a turn, Madame?" and she looked up into
the eyes of the Prince.

For a second she hesitated. Her first impulse was to scornfully say no,
but she quickly realized that would be undignified and absurd; so she
said yes, coldly, and let him place his arm about her. The band was
playing a particularly sensuous valse, which drove all young people mad
that year, and--if the Count had danced well--this man's movements were
heaven. Tamara did not speak a word. She purposely did not look at him,
but drooped her proud head so that the flashing diamonds of her tiara
were all he could have seen of her.

He put no special meaning into the way he held her; he just danced
divinely; but there was something in the creature himself of a
perfectly annoying attractiveness--or so it seemed to Tamara.

They at last paused for a moment, and then he spoke. He made not the
slightest allusion to the Sphinx incident. He spoke gravely of Cairo,
and the polo, and the races, and said that his Grand Duke had arrived
that day. He was not on his staff, but was indeed travelling in Egypt
for his own amusement and delectation, he said.

He had been there since November, it seemed, and had been up the Nile,
and had fortunately been able to secure a little bungalow at Mena,
where he could spend some hours of peace.

Then Tamara laughed. She remembered Millicent Hardcastle's
consternation over those unfortunate pyjamas. She wondered if Millicent