"'I can think better with my clothes off,' I said, and slipped the coat from my shoulders. How tired I was! 'I can think better in bed,' I muttered, flinging my cravat on the dresser and tossing my shirt-studs after it. I was certainly very tired. 'Now,' I yawned, grasping the pillow and drawing it under my head—'now I can think a bit.' But before my head fell on the pillow sleep closed my eyes.
"I began to dream at once. It seemed as though my eyes were wide open and the professor was standing beside my bed.
"'Young man,' he said, 'you've won my daughter and you must pay the piper!'
"'What piper?' I said.
"'The Pied Piper of Hamelin, I don't think,' replied the professor, vulgarly, and before I could realize what he was doing he had drawn a reed pipe from his dressing-gown and was playing a strangely annoying air. Then an awful thing occurred. Cats began to troop into the room, cats by the hundred—toms and tabbies, gray, yellow, Maltese, Persian, Manx—all purring and all marching round and round, rubbing against the furniture, the professor, and even against me. I struggled with the nightmare.
"'Take them away!' I tried to gasp.
"'Nonsense!' he said; 'here is an old friend.'
"I saw the white tabby cat of the Hôtel St. Antoine.
"'An old friend,' he repeated, and played a dismal melody on his reed.
"I saw Wilhelmina enter the room, lift the white tabby in her arms, and bring her to my side.