..
Again he thought of what he should do. Now that he commanded a
composure which had not been his during the stress of his flight, he
examined every aspect with greater care. But the conclusions of
composure were the same as those of excitement. He could not gain
entrance to one of the great hotels and remain in his room,
unidentified among its thousands of strangers; he could not find
asylum in one of his old haunts; he dared not try to leave Manhattan.
He was a prisoner, whose only privilege was a larger but most
uncertain liberty.
And that liberty was becoming penetratingly uncomfortable. An hour had
passed, the ground on which he sat was wet and cold, and the misty air
was assuming a distressing kinship with departed winter and was making
shivering assaults upon his bones. At the best, he realized, he could
not hope to remain secure in this cultivated wilderness beyond
daylight. With the coming of morning he would certainly be the prey of
either his pals or the police. And if they did not beat him from his
hiding, plain mortal hunger would drive him out into the open streets.
If he was to do anything at all, he must do it while he still had the
moderate protection of the night.
And then for the first time there came to him remembrance of Hunt's
rapid injunction, given him in the hurly-burly of escape when no
thoughts could impress the upper surface of his mind save those of the
immediate moment.
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