Perhaps they both were thinking of this rather ancient episode now,
for his face was touched with a mischievously reminiscent smile, and
she had lowered her head a trifle over the keyboard where her slim,
ivory-tinted hands still idly searched after elusive harmonies in the
subdued light of the single lamp.
"There's a man dining with us," she remarked, "who has the same
irresponsible and casual views on life and manners which you
entertain. No doubt you'll get along very well together."
"Who is he?"
"A Captain Sengoun, one of our attachés. It's likely you'll find a
congenial soul in this same Cossack whom we all call Alak." She added
maliciously: "His only logic is the impulse of the moment, and he is
known as Prince Erlik among his familiars. Erlik was the Devil, you
know----"
He was announced at that moment, and came marching in--a dark,
handsome, wiry young man with winning black eyes and a little black
moustache just shadowing his short upper lip--and a head shaped to
contain the devil himself--the most reckless looking head, Neeland
thought, that he ever had beheld in all his life.
But the young fellow's frank smile was utterly irresistible, and his
straight manner of facing one, and of looking directly into the eyes
of the person he addressed in his almost too perfect English, won any
listener immediately.
He bowed formally over Princess Naïa's hand, turned squarely on
Neeland when he was named to the American, and exchanged a firm clasp
with him. Then, to the Princess: "I am late? No? Fancy, Princess--that great booby, Izzet Bey, must
stop me at the club, and I exceedingly pressed to dress and entirely
out of humour with all Turks. 'Eh bien, mon vieux!' said he in his
mincing manner of a nervous pelican, 'they're warming up the Balkan
boilers with Austrian pine. But I hear they're full of snow.' And I
said to him: 'Snow boils very nicely if the fire is sufficiently
persistent!' And I think Izzet Bey will find it so!"--with a quick
laugh of explanation to Neeland: "He meant Russian snow, you see; and
that boils beautifully if they keep on stoking the boiler with
Austrian fuel."
The Princess shrugged: "What schoolboy repartée! Why did you answer him at all, Alak?"
"Well," explained the attaché, "as I was due here at eight I hadn't
time to take him by the nose, had I?"
Rue Carew entered and went to the Princess to make amends: "I'm so sorry to be late!"--turned to smile at Neeland, then offered
her hand to the Russian. "How do you do, Prince Erlik?" she said with
the careless and gay cordiality of old acquaintance. "I heard you say
something about Colonel Izzet Bey's nose as I came in."