midnight
She speaks then in an intimate whisper foreign to her by day , veiling her earthlier loquacity in a dreaming wonder , softening and sweetening like a woman awaiting her lover . The great steel shafts enclosed in their white marble become turrets crowned with mystery . And the street-floor itself , as clean and polished as a ballroom , seems to undulate off into outer kingdoms of romance . An occasional lonely motor-car , dipping up its gentle slopes like a ship treading a narrow sea-lane buoyed with pearls as huge as pumpkins , only accentuates the midnight solitude . So up this dustless and odorless and transmuted avenue I wandered , as passively as a policeman on his beat , asking of the quietness when and how I might capture that crown of weariness known as sleep . I wandered on , mocked at by a thousand drawn blinds , taunted by a thousand somnolently closed doors . I felt , in that city of rest , as homeless as a prairie wolf .