ed with _Signore_ Hank, and with myself too, if the truth be
told. I had not taken hold of the situation. I had allowed him to impose
on me. I suppose you have had the experience, when someone for whom you
have no esteem, imposes his pinchbeck personality upon you. Save for the
story which this Doctor West of the Hotel Robinson might spin, I would
have gone back to the _Corydon_ and forgotten it. I wandered about a
good bit, when a bell-hop showed me an unexpected way out, and there was
Mister Sachs at the gangway, looking about for me.

"'Why, where 'ave you been?' he asked. 'I thought you'd gone.'

"'Well, you needn't bother to wait if you're in a hurry,' I answered,
testily, going down the shrouded gangway.

"Oh, that's not what I meant,' he said, coming after me smartly,
buttoning up his coat and taking out his gloves. 'Fact is, Mister,' he
went on, 'I'd take it as a favour--this is the quickest way up to Hotel
Robinson--if you'd give me an introduction to your captain.'

"I looked at him astounded, all at sea.

"'Representing Babbolini's,' he added, feeling in his pocket for a card.
'Course, any business done's between ourselves. We have a big connection
and can always give satisfaction.'

"So you see how the mere contact of these people contaminates. He was
trying to make me his tout to the _Corydon_, me, the once future Prime
Minister of England, the child of many prayers! You may say, how were
the mighty fallen! Indeed, I was ashamed. I said nothing.

"'Of course,' said little Sachs, his pimpled, dough-coloured face close
to mine. 'Of course, if you don't care to speak to the Captain, the
Chief Steward....'

"There was a trolley car station just outside the gates of the Dogana,
and I halted there and said to him:

"'Look here, don't you worry to come any farther with me. You've got
business to attend to, I dare say. Run right along and attend to it.
Good morning.'

"I was none the better for this encounter when I finally reached the
Hotel Robinson and stood in an entrance-hall that was high and dark and
as cold as an ice box. I felt humiliated as well as depressed. They say
people take a man at his own valuation. People don't. They average their
own experience, and the answer is never very high.

"The Hotel Robinson was one of those rather shabby, half-hotel,
half-pension affairs which seem to hang on year after year with any
visible means of support. I say 'seem.' As a matter of fact it was a
stead