midnight
`` Oh , Jim , I 've been such a fool ! '' I heard her wail . And I could see that she was going to cry . I knew , too , that that midnight of blunders had left me nothing to be proud of , that I had been an idiot from the first -- and to make that idiocy worse , I was now an intruder . `` I 'll slip down and look after that phoning , '' I mumbled , so abashed and humiliated that as I groped wearily out through the door I stumbled over the Russian-squirrel bundle which I had placed there with my own hands . It was not until I reached the street that I realized , with a gulp of relief , how yet another night of threatening misery had been dissembled and lost in action , very much as the pills of childhood are dissembled in a spoonful of jelly . I sat in that nocturnal sun-parlor of mine , known to the world as Madison Square , demanding of the quiet night why sleep should be denied me , and doing my best to keep from thinking of Mary Lockwood .