four o'clock in the morning
He was afraid to go to bed that night , and he went to the club and watched some of his friends playing cards until he could not keep his eyes open ; for gambling bored him to extinction . Then he walked the whole length of the Corso and back , in the hope that the exercise might prevent him from dreaming . But it only roused him again ; and when he was in his own room he stood nearly two hours at the open window , smoking one cigar after another . At last he lay down without putting out the light and read a French novel till it dropped from his hand , and he fell asleep at four o'clock in the morning . He was not visited by the dream that had disturbed his rest nightly for a full fortnight . Possibly the doctor had been right after all , and the habit was broken . At all events , what he remembered having felt when he awoke was something quite new and not altogether unpleasant after the first beginning , yet so strangely undefined that he would have found it hard to describe it in any words .