When the train ran into Bologna Station, they were still in the restaurant car.  Nor did they go at once to their seats.  Angus had paid the bill.  There was three-quarters-of-an-hour’s wait in Bologna.

“You may as well come down and sit with us,” said Francis.  “We’ve got nobody in our carriage, so why shouldn’t we all stay together during the wait.  You kept your own seat, I suppose.”

No, he had forgotten.  So when he went to look for it, it was occupied by a stout man who was just taking off his collar and wrapping a white kerchief round his neck.  The third class carriages were packed.  For those were early days after the war, while men still had pre-war notions and were poor.  Ten months would steal imperceptibly by, and the mysterious revolution would be effected.  Then, the second class and the first class would be packed, indescribably packed, crowded, on all great trains:  and the third class carriages, lo and behold, would be comparatively empty.  Oh, marvellous days of bankruptcy, when nobody will condescend to travel third!

However, these were still modest, sombre months immediately after the peace.  So a large man with a fat neck and a white kerchief, and his collar over his knee, sat in Aaron’s seat.  Aaron looked at the man, and at his own luggage overhead.  The fat man saw him looking and stared back:  then stared also at the luggage overhead:  and with his almost invisible north-Italian gesture said much plainer than words would have said it:  “Go to hell.  I’m here and I’m going to stop here.”

There was something insolent and unbearable about the look—­and about the rocky fixity of the large man.  He sat as if he had insolently taken root in his seat.  Aaron flushed slightly.  Francis and Angus strolled along the train, outside, for the corridor was already blocked with the mad Bologna rush, and the baggage belonging.  They joined Aaron as he stood on the platform.

“But where is YOUR SEAT?” cried Francis, peering into the packed and jammed compartments of the third class.

“That man’s sitting in it.”

“Which?” cried Francis, indignant.

“The fat one there—­with the collar on his knee.”

“But it was your seat—!”

Francis’ gorge rose in indignation.  He mounted into the corridor.  And in the doorway of the compartment he bridled like an angry horse rearing, bridling his head.  Poising himself on one hip, he stared fixedly at the man with the collar on his knee, then at the baggage aloft.  He looked down at the fat man as a bird looks down from the eaves of a house.  But the man looked back with a solid, rock-like impudence, before which an Englishman quails:  a jeering, immovable insolence, with a sneer round the nose and a solid-seated posterior.

“But,” said Francis in English—­none of them had any Italian yet.  “But,” said Francis, turning round to Aaron, “that was YOUR SEAT?” and he flung his long fore-finger in the direction of the fat man’s thighs.