WASHINGTON — President Trump walked on the muddy, rain-drenched grounds of Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, finding himself in an unusual position for a voluble man: a solitary figure, as he attended a ceremony to lay wreaths for the fallen.

It was a studied contrast, and an implicit atonement, to his decisions last month to forgo a ceremony in France and the traditional visit to Arlington on Veterans Day.

The president, holding a black umbrella, made his way on Saturday among the headstones of the military veterans who are buried at Arlington. He chatted with a guide as he viewed some of the thousands of wreaths that had been laid for an event called Wreaths Across America.

During a two-day trip to Paris in November, as part of ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Mr. Trump scrapped a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited rain, saying that the weather could have caused difficulty for the president’s helicopter.