four o'clock
`` You just know I will , Babe . '' An hour she sat there , alone on the _ chaise-longue _ , staring into space and smiling at what she saw there . Finally she dropped back into the lacy mound of pillows , almost instantly asleep , but still smiling . * * * * * At four o'clock , that hour before dawn cracks , even the West Forties , where night is too often cacophonous with the sound of revelry , drop into long narrow aisles of gloom . Thin , high-stooped houses with drawn shades recede into the mouse-colored mist of morning , and , as through quagmire , this mist hovering close to ground , figures skulk -- that nameless , shapeless race of many bloods and one complexion , the underground complexion of paste long sour from standing . At somewhat after that hour Mr. Blutch Connors made exit from one of these houses , noiseless , with scarcely a click after him , and then , without pause , passed down the brownstone steps and eastward . A taxicab slid by , its honk as sorrowful as the cry of a plover in a bog .