Bob Fielding and Winifred tested the capacity of a taxicab, and Forbes stood ready to escort Mrs. Neff home in her own car; but she shook her head as she gaped:
"Nonsense! I'll not be so cruel. You've done enough for me. You go on back to your hotel and get to bed. But first wait—oh wait—have you a box of matches you can give me? Thanks! You've saved my life. Good night."
Forbes paused to say: "Does the chauffeur know you want to go home?"
"I should hope so, at this hour!"
Forbes closed the door with an apology and set out to walk to his hotel. It was only a few blocks away, but it seemed a hundred miles. And he yawned so ferociously that he feared for the buildings. He found the scrubwomen agonizing again on their knees across the lobby floor. He was too drowsy to feel sorry for them, or to remember to leave a call for six o'clock at the desk, as he had planned.
He plucked off his clothes in a stupor, and slid straight into the abyss of sleep as he shoved his dance-weary toes down into the sheets. At five the imaginary reveille woke him for a moment. He simply came up to consciousness like a diver gulping a breath, and was underneath again at once. He dreamed that he was riding in the park and, catching sight of a saddle-horse in a tantrum, galloped forward to find that Persis was the rider. She was having a desperate battle with the frothing beast and was about to be thrown off. But Forbes, outstripping two or three mounted policemen, swept alongside and caught her from her saddle to his pommel. Her father, whose own horse was plunging, was so grateful that he presented Forbes with Persis' hand. A mounted clergyman chanced to be cantering by, and he was recruited to perform the ceremony, with the mounted policemen as bridesmaid and best man. By one of those splendid coincidences in which dreams are so fertile, a thicket of trees proved to be a pipe-organ, and began to blare a popular tune of Mr. Mendelssohn's. The noise woke Forbes, and to his unspeakable disappointment he found himself in a bachelor bed at a hotel, with Times Square furnishing a roaring offertory.
Automatically he reached for his watch, wondering if he could not have a little further nap to get back into that dream without delay.
But the dial blandly informed him that it wanted a few minutes to noon. Horror shocked him wide awake.