Hebrew, Gothic nor Latin, three scripts with which I already had a working knowledge.
"It's Greek," she said, "and was once probably set in a ring."
Hope
number one gone. Trembling a little, I pointed to the second stone
without speaking. It was a black, circular disk, also highly polished
and non-lustrous, divided into two almost equal parts by a streak of
white, rather like a silver girdle round a naked black waist.
"Onyx,"
said my mother dryly. I peered at the graven stone. It had no lettering
upon it, certainly, but in four fields or divisions there appeared
hollow engravings— "intaglio" my mother called them, and added that
they formed a heraldic design that had been part of a seal. She heated
some sealing-wax to show me an impression from the stone. In the
quarterings were a lion ready to spring, a crowing cock, three fingers,
a broken spear—all very fascinating if I had not, for the moment, been
obsessed. Of Hebrew character there was, of course, no sign. My
bitterness was complete and overwhelming, as only the pangs of extreme
youth can be. I did not know, and would not have cared if I had known,
that my apprenticeship had well begun.
