midnight
He wondered if he meant to deliver it and admit that he knew Ashton , or if he meant just to stick a stamp on and post it to her . He realised that there was nothing very much to be proud of in an admission that he knew Ashton , and yet they had been friends for years . It was striking twelve when he got home ; he stood for a moment on the doorstep , looking up at the starry sky . Several clocks were chiming midnight in the distance ; he listened with a queer sense of fatalism . This was the strangest New Year 's Eve he had ever spent in his life . At this hour last year he had been dancing the old year out , and to-night , had things gone as he had thought , he would have been somewhere with Marie Deland -- he might even have proposed to her by this time . He smiled faintly , remembering that the intention had really been somewhere in the background of his mind ; but that , too , had faded out now to give place to other , more important , factors .