“Well,” thought Aaron, “if this is all it amounts to, to be rich, you can have riches.  They talk about money being power.  But the only sort of power it has over me is to bring on a kind of numbness, which I fairly hate.  No wonder rich people don’t seem to be really alive.”

The relief of escaping quite took away his self-conscious embarrassment at the station.  He carried his own bags, bought a third-class ticket, and got into the train for Milan without caring one straw for the comments or the looks of the porters.

It began to rain.  The rain ran across the great plain of north Italy.  Aaron sat in his wood-seated carriage and smoked his pipe in silence, looking at the thick, short Lombards opposite him without heeding them.  He paid hardly any outward attention to his surroundings, but sat involved in himself.

In Milan he had been advised to go to the Hotel Britannia, because it was not expensive, and English people went there.  So he took a carriage, drove round the green space in front of Milan station, and away into the town.  The streets were busy, but only half-heartedly so.

It must be confessed that every new move he made was rather an effort.  Even he himself wondered why he was struggling with foreign porters and foreign cabmen, being talked at and not understanding a word.  But there he was.  So he went on with it.

The hotel was small and congenial.  The hotel porter answered in English.  Aaron was given a little room with a tiny balcony, looking on to a quiet street.  So, he had a home of his own once more.  He washed, and then counted his money.  Thirty-seven pounds he had:  and no more.  He stood on the balcony and looked at the people going by below.  Life seems to be moving so quick, when one looks down on it from above.

Across the road was a large stone house with its green shutters all closed.  But from the flagpole under the eaves, over the central window of the uppermost floor—­the house was four storeys high—­waved the Italian flag in the melancholy damp air.  Aaron looked at it—­the red, white and green tricolour, with the white cross of Savoy in the centre.  It hung damp and still.  And there seemed a curious vacancy in the city—­something empty and depressing in the great human centre.  Not that there was really a lack of people.  But the spirit of the town seemed depressed and empty.  It was a national holiday.  The Italian flag was hanging from almost every housefront.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon.  Aaron sat in the restaurant of the hotel drinking tea, for he was rather tired, and looking through the thin curtains at the little square outside, where people passed:  little groups of dark, aimless-seeming men, a little bit poorer looking—­perhaps rather shorter in stature—­but very much like the people in any other town.  Yet the feeling of the city was so different from that of London.  There seemed a curious emptiness.  The rain had ceased, but the pavements were still wet.  There was a tension.