midnight
And staying in the same hotel , too ! '' When she saw that I was struggling hard she reminded my husband of his intention of asking Martin to dinner , and thereupon a night was fixed and a party invited . Martin came , and I was only too happy to meet him in company , though the pain and humiliation of the contrast between him and my husband and his friends , and the difference of the atmosphere in which he lived from that to which I thought I was doomed for ever , was almost more than I could bear . I think they must have felt it themselves , for though their usual conversation was of horses and dogs and race-meetings , I noticed they were silent while Martin in his rugged , racy poetic way -LRB- for all explorers are poets -RRB- talked of the beauty of the great Polar night , the cloudless Polar day , the midnight calm and the moonlight on the glaciers , which was the loveliest , weirdest , most desolate , yet most entrancing light the world could show . `` I wonder you do n't think of going back to the Antarctic , if it 's so fascinating , '' said Alma . `` I do . Bet your life I do , '' said Martin , and then he told them what he had told me on the launch , but more fully and even more rapturously -- the story of his great scheme for saving life and otherwise benefiting humanity .