Every traveller is conscious of it. His bow showed it--so did the soft
purring quality of his speech. Recollections of Manila, Santiago, and
the voyage of the Oregon around Cape Horn were in the bow, and Kansas
wheat, Georgia cotton, and the Steel Trust in the dulcet tones of his
voice. That he should have mistaken me for a great financial magnate
controlling some one of these colossal industries, instead of locating
me instantly as a staid, gray-haired, and rather impecunious
landscape-painter, was quite natural. Others before him have made that
same mistake. Why, then, undeceive him? Let it go--he would leave in the
morning and go his way, and I should never see him more. So I smoked on,
chatting pleasantly and, as was my custom, summing him up.
He was perhaps seventy--smooth-shaven--black--coal-black eyes. Dressed
simply in black clothes--not a jewel--no watch-chain even--no rings on
his hands but a plain gold one like a wedding-ring. His dressing-case
showed the gentleman. Bottles with silver tops--brushes backed with
initials--soap in a silver cup.
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