Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/81

Rh try. But to him they meant more. They meant the brave, clanking hopes of his youth. They meant the name and the pride of the family to which he belonged. His memory had ensouled them with a softness, a throbbing which was deeper than the heart of woman.

For they meant to him the things he had lost. They meant to him the things he had thrown away, the things he had hurt and cheated and polluted; the name he had disgraced, the escutcheon he had fouled—the mother, cold and haughty, dry-eyed and thin-lipped, who had given up everything for him, and given up in vain—the sister, bitter and dowerless, forced into the convent which she hated and feared—the younger brother who had to sacrifice the diplomatic career for which he had been trained, to go into the office of a fat agent de change, who patronized him and bullied him because of the noble name he bore.

Why, even the little glass cabinet had been sold; even the dun-colored Tanagra statuettes, the boxes in Vernis-Martin, the glasses of Gallé-Nancy, and the many other objects of virtu.

The forests had been sold, the fields, the paintings, the famed wine cellar; finally the house itself; the