Four o'clock
It may be pink and red and golden and full of all the splendours of the east , but it is a resurrection and you ca n't make anything else out of it . Staying up till four and then going to bed gives one an idea of the sunrise that is not supported by the facts ; there is but one way to appreciate the real nature of the hateful thing called dawn , and that is to get up with it instead of taking it to bed with you . Still , I suppose the sun _ has _ to come up and perhaps it is just as well that it does so at an hour when people are least likely to suspect it of anything so shabby . Four o'clock is more than a graceless , sodden hour when it ushers in a day that you know is to be the unhappiest in your life ; when you know that you are to say farewell forever to the hopes begot and nurtured in other days ; when the one you love smiles and goes away to smile again but not for you . And that is just what four o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth of September meant to me . Britton and I set forth in the automobile just at the break of dawn , crossing the river a few miles below the castle , and running back to a point on the right hand bank where we were to await the arrival of the boat conveying the Countess and her escort . Her luggage , carefully disguised as crated merchandise , had gone to Trieste by fast express a couple of days before , sent in my name and consigned to a gentleman whose name I do not now recall , but who in reality served as a sort of middleman in transferring the shipment to the custody of a certain yacht 's commander .