Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/99

Rh finishing it in a prescribed time. It was true that he left the dining-room as soon as he had finished his smoke, that he ran up the stairs to his study with a youthful rush of speed, and that on two occasions she had heard drifting down from there savage shouts and strange, barbarous chants which had made her blood run cold.

One day she forgot her pride and asked him point-blank:

"Are you doing any special work up there?"

He replied in the negative. Then he added, quite unconscious of what he was saying, but with a queer, thin whisper that conveyed the gravity of his conviction with a greater impressiveness than a loud-spoken word would have done:

"You would not understand, my dear. Nobody would. I—oh, well—"

"What?" she cut in acidulously.

"I—I—" He stopped, blushed painfully, guiltily; then continued with a rush: "I am living the days when my race was young and was about to conquer the world. I am living the days when my forefathers ate and slept and fought and loved on horseback, when they worshiped the god who was a naked sword, when they slaughtered a thousand