With this as a possibility, he got down to his peephole, put the pistol near him on the floor, and began on his doughnuts. For breakfast, he allowed himself three, keeping the rest for his midday needs. When darkness fell he would steal out and buy more. He could do this as long as his money held out, and before it was spent something would probably have happened. What that something would be he did not forecast. He was in a fix where forecasting wasn't possible. The minute was the only thing, and a thing that had grown precious.
Even the family had somehow become subordinate to that. In the strangeness of his night, he seemed to have traveled away from them. A man clinging to a spar on the ocean might have had this sense of remoteness from his dear ones safe on shore. Since they were safe on shore, that would be the main thing. Since his mother and sisters could come and go in Indiana Avenue, he could wish them nothing more. That was the all-essential, and they had it. Want, anxiety, grief, "and no Teddy coming home in the evenings," were trifles as compared with this priceless blessing of security.
So he settled down amid filth and slime and the debris of charred wood to watch and wait and cling to his life till he could cling to it no longer.
Later that morning, Mrs. Collingham motored from Marillo to see Hubert Wray's much-discussed picture, "Life and Death," in a famous dealer's gallery in Fifth Avenue. It had hung there a week, and though the season was dead, it was being talked about. Among the few in New York who care for the art of painting, the picture had "caught on." The important critics had honored it with articles, in which one wrote black and another white with an equal authority. The important middlemen had come in to look at it, saying to one another, "Here's a fellow who'll go far--_en voilà un qui va faire son chemin_." The important connoisseurs had made a point of viewing it, with their customary fear of expressing admiration for the work of a native son. From the few who knew, the interest was spreading to the many who didn't know but were anxious to appear as if they did.
Junia's introduction to the picture had caused her some chagrin. She had not ranked Hubert among the important family acquaintances, and when he came down to Collingham Lodge, for a night or two, as occasionally he did, she presented him to only the more negligible neighbors. "A young man Bob met in France," was all the explanation he required.