midnight
But with him such moods were of brief duration ; he suddenly quitted the table , and went out into the night air . The late moon was rising , amber-coloured on a sky of dusky azure . He walked from the garden , across the road , and towards the ruins of the Amphitheatre , which lie some distance apart from the Pompeian streets that have been unearthed ; he passed beneath an arch , and stood looking down into the dark hollow so often thronged with citizens of Latin speech . Small wonder that Benvenuto 's necromancer could evoke his myriads of flitting ghosts in the midnight Colosseum ; here too it needed but to stand for a few minutes in the dead stillness , and the air grew alive with mysterious presences , murmurous with awful whisperings . Mallard enjoyed it for awhile , but at length turned away abruptly , feeling as if a cold hand had touched him . As he re-entered the inn-precincts , he heard voices still uproarious in the dining-room ; but he had no intention of going among them again . His bedroom was one of a row which opened immediately upon the garden .