midnight
Ah ! Love , it seemed far away indeed from the stars , the place where we met , and only by the light of love 's eyes might we have found each other -- as only by the light of love 's eyes ... But enough , my Heart , the world waits to hear our story , -- the world once so unloving to you , the world with a heart so hard and anon so soft for love . When the story is ended , my love , when the story is ended -- It was a hard winter 's night four years ago , lovely and merciless ; and towards midnight I walked home from a theatre to my rooms in St. James 's Street . The Venusberg of Piccadilly looked white as a nun with snow and moonlight , but the melancholy music of pleasure , and the sad daughters of joy , seemed not to heed the cold . For another hour death and pleasure would dance there beneath the electric lights . Through the strange women clustering at the corners I took my way , -- women of the Moabites , Ammonites , Edomites , Zidonians , and Hittites , -- and I thought , as I looked into their poor painted faces , -- faces but half human , vampirish faces , faces already waxen with the look of the grave , -- I thought , as I often did , of the poor little girl whom De Quincey loved , the good-hearted little ` peripatetic ' as he called her , who had succoured him during those nights , when , as a young man , he wandered homeless about these very streets , -- that good , kind little Ann whom De Quincey had loved , then so strangely lost , and for whose face he looked into women 's faces as long as he lived .