The noises of the street, pleasantly muffled, reached him; movements in the house were faintly audible and pleasantly homely; the sun shone with a lonely brilliance against his walls.
During such periods he took an inventory of life from a new angle. He sat in judgment upon himself like a disinterested person. Baron, disabled, critically surveyed Baron, able to be about.
“Spendthrift of time and chance—that’s what you are,” decided Baron, disabled, directing his condemnation against Baron, well and sound. “You’ve been thinking all the time that to be Baron was something fine. You haven’t had sense enough to realize that merely being Baron wasn’t being anything at all. You’ve got to realize that all men must be measured by just one standard. You’ve got to quit thinking it’s right for you to do just the pleasant things—the things you like to do. You have got to go to work, and take orders like any other man.”
Lying in his room, he obtained a new impression of Bonnie May, too.
She did not return to the mansion on the day of his accident. He thought she might possibly do so after the theatre hour, but the evening passed and in due time there were the sounds of the house being closed for the night, and languid voices calling to one another on the floor below.
The first long night passed, with occasional tapping on the invalid’s door by Mrs. Baron. A dozen times during the night she came to see if he needed anything, to be sure that he rested comfortably.
Finally he chided her gayly for disturbing him and herself; then, after another interval which seemed only of a few minutes, he opened his eyes again to respond to the tapping on the door, and discovered that the sun was shining into the room. It was quite late in the forenoon.
“I’ve come with the papers,” said Flora, approaching his bed like a particularly lovely ministering angel. “Mother’s lying down. She didn’t sleep very well last night.”
Baron had the odd thought that people must look entirely different if you looked at them while you were lying down. Never before had Flora seemed so serene and beautiful and richly endowed with graces of person and voice. He was so pleased with this view of her that he decided not to lift his head.
Then, while she arranged the papers, unconscious of his scrutiny, he read an expression in her eyes which brought him abruptly to his elbow.