In its way it had been a make-believe rancor, a rancor on principle, for he had been made to see that unless he was inflamed by it, he was not worthy to be his mother's son.

Tonight had changed all this.

No longer was his grievance sentimental, theoretical or abstract.

It was suddenly become real and very bitter.

It was no longer a question of the wrong done his mother thirty years ago; it became the question of a wrong done himself in casting him nameless upon the world, a thing of scorn to cruel, unjust humanity.