midnight
P. Sybarite , moving instinctively to follow , leaped back to the sidewalk barely in time to save his toes a crushing beneath the tires of a hurtling taxicab . He smiled a furtive apology at Molly Lessing , who had demonstrated greater discretion , and she returned his smile in the friendliest manner . His head was buzzing -- and her eyes were kind . Neither spoke ; but for an instant he experienced a breathless sense of sympathetic isolation with her , there on that crowded corner , elbowed and shouldered in the eddy caused by the junction of the outpouring audience with the midnight tides of wayfarers surging north and south . The wonder and the romance of the play were still warm and vital , in his imagination , infusing his thoughts with a roseate glamour of unreality , wherein all things were strangely possible . The iridescent imagery of the Arabian Nights of his boyhood -LRB- who has forgotten the fascination of those three fat old volumes of crabbed type , illuminated with their hundreds of cramped old wood-cuts ? -RRB- had in a scant three hours been recreated for him by Knoblauch 's fantastic drama with its splendid investment of scene and costume , its admirable histrionic interpretation , and the robust yet exquisitely tempered artistry of Otis Skinner .