Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/205

there was a second cousin of his. He would give him the precious formula, and then—

He returned to the pension in the Dahlmannstrasse, settled his bill, and ordered Kaguchi to pack. Notebook after notebook he burned, and as he worked he was conscious of a feeling of power. There was no actual presentiment, no psychic preliminaries. It simply was there, this feeling of power, as if it had always been there. He was a samurai, and his was the two-handed sword—a two-handed sword forged in a stinking, bulb-shaped glass retort and shooting forth yellow, choking, sulphurous fumes.

In the next room a half dozen Germans were smoking and drinking and singing. He could hear Hans Grosser's excited voice, and now and then a snatch of song, sentimental, patriotic, boastful, and he thought that he too would soon again hear the songs of his fatherland, back in the island of Kiushu, in the rocky feudal stronghold of the Takagawas. The bards would be there singing the old heroic epics; the uguisus would warble the old melodies. Komoto would be there, and he himself, and his grandfather, the marquis.

"You will learn honorably!" his grandfather had told him. And he had learned. He was bringing back the fruit of it to Nippon.

He turned to Kaguchi with a laugh.

"I have learned, Kaguchi, eh?"

"Yes," replied the old servant, "you have learned indeed, O Takamori-san!"

"And"—he said it half to himself—"I have learned honorably."

Honorably?