"'Because you seemed to be the kind of a man who would understand me best. I watched you for weeks, though you didn't know it. You've got people who love you for yourself. You go into Florian's or the Quadri and you can't get a chance to swallow a mouthful for fellows who want to shake hands with you and slap you on the back. When I saw that, I got up courage enough to speak to you.
"'When that first night you wouldn't introduce me to your friend Roscoff, I saw how it was and how you suspected me, and I came near giving it up. Then I thought I'd try again, and if you hadn't introduced Mr. Cruthers to me, and if he hadn't drank my wine, I would have given it up. But I don't want them to like me because I'm with you. I want them to like me for myself, so they'll be glad to see me when I come in, just as they are glad to see you.
"'I come from Pennsylvania. My father owns the oil-wells at Stockville. He came over from Holland when he was a boy. He sent me over here six months ago to learn something about the world, and told me not to come back till I did. I got to Paris, and I couldn't find a soul to talk to but the hotel porter; then I kept on to Lucerne, and it was no better there. When I got as far as Dresden I mustered up courage to speak to a man in the station, but he moved off, and I saw him afterward speaking to a policeman and pointing to me. Then I came on down here. I thought maybe if I got some good rooms to live in where people could be comfortable, I could get somebody to come in and sit down. So I bought this lot of truck of an Italian named Almadi—a prince or something—and moved in. I tried the fellows who lived here—you saw them sticking their heads out as we came up—but they don't speak English, so I was as bad off as I was before. Then I made up my mind I'd tackle you and keep at it till I got to know you. You might think it queer now that I didn't tell you before who I was or how I came here, or how lonesome I was—just lonesome—but I just couldn't. I didn't want your pity, I wanted your friendship. That's all.'
"He had straightened up now, and was leaning back in his chair.
"'And it was just dead lonesomeness, then, was it?' and I held out my hand to him.
"'Yes—the deadliest kind of lonesome. Kind makes you want to fall off a dock. Now, please drink my wine'—and he pushed the bottle toward me—'I had a devil of a hunt for it, but I wanted to do something for you you couldn't do for yourself.'
"We fellows, I tell you, took charge of Diffendorfer after that, and a ripping good fellow he was. We got that high collar off of him, a slouch hat on his head instead of his stove-pipe, and a pipe in his mouth, and before the winter was over he had more friends than any fellow in Venice. It was only awkwardness that made him talk so queer and ugly. And maybe we didn't have some good times in those rooms of his on the Zattere!"
Marny stopped, threw away the end of his cigar, laid a coin under his plate for the waiter and another on top of it for Henri, the chef, reached for his hat, and said, as he rose from his seat, and flecked the ashes from his coat-sleeve:
"So now, whenever I see a poor devil haunting a place like this, looking around out of the corner of his eye, hoping somebody will speak to him, I say that's a Diffendorfer, and more than half the time I'm right."