Above them, three fragments of Prussian battle-flags formed a kind of frieze, their color softened by the fading sunset, even as the fading of the dream of imperial glory had dulled and dimmed all that for which they had stood.
The southern wall of that strange room--that quiet room to which only a far, vague murmur of the city's life whispered up, with faint blurs of steamer-whistles from the river--bore Turkish spoils of battle.
Here hung more rifles, there a Kurdish yataghan with two hand-grenades from Gallipoli, and a blood-red banner with a crescent and one star worked in gold thread.

Aviator's gauntlets draped the staff of the banner.
Along the eastern side of this eyrie a broad divan invited one to rest.

Over it were suspended Austrian and Bulgarian captures--a lance with a blood-stiffened pennant, a cuirass, entrenching tools, a steel helmet with an eloquent bullet-hole through the crown.

Some few framed portraits of noted "aces" hung here and elsewhere, with two or three photographs of battle-planes.

Three of the portraits were framed in symbolic black.