midnight
She felt strongly the indecency of grasping old age . And through her there floated strange echoes of voices which had haunted Lady Sellingworth 's youth , voices which had died away long ago in Berkeley Square , but which are captured by succeeding generations of women , and which persist through the ages , finding ever new dwellings . The night was growing late , but the Georgians bitterly complained of the absurdity of London having a closing time . The heat and the noise seemed to swell with the passing of the hours , and a curious and anemic brutality dawned with the midnight upon many of the faces around the narrow tables . They looked at the same time bloodless and hard . Eyes full of languor , or feverish with apparent expectation of some impending adventure , stared fixedly through the smoke wreaths at other eyes in the distance . Loud voices hammered through the murk .