He wondered what they did in Italy to
people who "beat" hotels; and, remembering what some one had told him
of the dreadfulness of Italian jails, convulsive shudderings seized upon
him.
The ruddy oblongs of sunlight crawled nearer to the east wall of the
room, stretching themselves thinner and thinner, until finally they
were not there at all, and the room was left in deepening grayness.
Carriages, one after the other, in unintermittent succession, rumbled
up to the hotel-entrance beneath the window, bringing goldfish for
the Pincio and the fountains of Villa Borghese. Wild strains from the
Hungarian orchestra, rhapsodical twankings of violins, and the runaway
arpeggios of a zither crazed with speed-mania, skipped along the
corridors and lightly through Mellin's door. In his mind's eye he saw
the gay crowd in the watery light, the little tables where only
five days ago he had sat with the loveliest of all the anemone-like
ladies....
The beautifully-dressed tea-drinkers were there now, under the green
glass dome, prattling and smiling, those people he had called his own.
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