But it was not a good night even so! Even what was left of the night was not good! Even after the brief commotion was over and the young stranger had been carried off more or less stumblingly to his own quarters in the hands of a most efficient and formidable valet, Daphne found her car only too frankly a sleepless car. Curling up just as she was in her easiest window-corner with all her pillows crushed behind her back, her knees hunched to her chin in the clasp of her slim white arms, she sat wide-eyed and feverish watching the cindery-smelling Southland go rushing darkly by to meet the North. Long forgotten incidents of her littlest childhood flared hectically back to her! Optical impressions so recent that they had scarcely yet reported to her consciousness seared like flame across her senses! The funny, furry scallop of her first kitten's ear, the jingling tune of a Christmas Cantata, the quite [83] irrelevant weave of the gray silk tie her English professor had worn at his last lecture, the queer white scar that slashed the tipsy stranger's face, some turquoise-colored dishes she had seen once in a shop-window, the crackling rhyme-words "faster"--"disaster" of a new poem she had just planned to write, the horrid crushed feeling of her nose when that Wiltoner boy had caught her so roughly to his breast, white narcissus and scarlet tulips bunched together somewhere in a jet-black basket, and--and always that queer white scar that slashed the tipsy stranger's face! Clacketty-clack-clack-clack of wheels and brakes, rhythm and rumble, rapture of speed, stark-eyed sleeplessness, a Railroad Night! Murky blackness spangled with hamlet lights! Interminable miles of wraith-like fog! A night-heron winging his homeward way suddenly across a bizarre sky striped like a Japanese fan! The faint, sweet, unbelievable scent of orange blossoms! And then the Florida Dawn! It was the dawn that crept so inquisitively to the hem of Daphne's gown. With her lovely tousled head cocked ever [84] so slightly to one side Daphne's glance followed the dawn's. Between her perfect eyebrows a curious little frown puckered suddenly. With a quick, raspy catch of her breath she jumped from her couch and bolted for her father's compartment. Digging her fingers quite unceremoniously into his gay-colored flannel shoulders she roused him from his dreams. "Old-Dad!" she cried, "I can't sleep!" "Very few people can," growled her father. "So why fuss about it?" "Yes--but Old-Dad!" persisted the girl. Her teeth were chattering and from hand to feet a dreadful convulsive chill seemed to be racking her suddenly. "For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?" cried her father. "It's that--kiss!" quivered Daphne. "Oh, shucks!" relaxed her father. "Forget it! It was a bit rough, I know! But remember--you had no right--at all--to go foraging into a tipsy man's smoking-room!"