two o’clock in the morning
Yet he was a perfect geyser of activity -- bounding about the stage , talking swiftly , gesticulating -- like some strange gnome or cobold out of the bowels of the earth . Thyrsis was the creator of the play , so far as concerned the words ; but this man was to be the creator of it on the stage . And that , too , required a kind of genius , Thyrsis perceived . Mr. Tapping had talked the problems out with him at the beginning -- talking until two o'clock in the morning , in a super-heated office filled with the smoke of ten thousand dead cigars . He talked swiftly , eagerly , setting forth his ideas ; to Thyrsis it was a most curious experience -- to hear the vision of his inmost soul translated into the language of the Tenderloin ! `` Your fiddler 's this kind of a guy , '' Mr. Tapping would say -- `` he knows he 's got the goods , and he do n't care whether those old fogies think he 's dippy , or what the hell they think . Ai n't that the dope , Mr. Author ? ''