midnight
But as I look back on it all I am aware chiefly of Jevons , of _ his _ opinions , _ his _ vision , _ his _ horror and excitement . I seem to have spent the greater part of those three days with Jevons , and there are moments , in looking back , when he fills the scene . He is the largest and most prominent figure in the crowd that walked the streets with me on the evening of the Ultimatum , that waited with me outside Buckingham Palace , when London let itself loose in madness ; he seems the only sane figure in that crowd or in the processions that moved for hours on end up and down Parliament Street , between Trafalgar Square and Palace Yard . It is as if I had stood alone with Jevons before the Mansion House at midnight when the Ultimatum was declared . And when I say that it was his horror and anxiety and excitement -- and his defiance and exaltation , if you like -- that I felt , I do not mean that Jevons talked about it . He was , for those three days , mostly silent . It is that I saw him consumed and burned up by the fever of patriotism and war , and that beside his passion any emotion I may have felt hardly counted .