three o'clock
`` It is my duty , '' said the porter , with amiable heroism . He discharged another duty by lighting a whole new candle , which would be set down to Colville 's account , and went before him to his room , up the wide stairs , cold in their white linen path , and on through the crooked corridors haunted by the ghosts of extinct _ tables d'hôte _ , and full of goblin shadows . He had recovered a noonday suavity by the time he reached Colville 's door , and bowed himself out , after lighting the candles within , with a sweet plenitude of politeness , which Colville , even in his gloomy mood , could not help admiring in a man in his shirt sleeves , with only one suspender up . If there had been a fire , Colville would have liked to sit down before it , and take an account of his feelings , but the atmosphere of a bed-chamber in a Florentine hotel at half-past three o'clock on a winter morning is not one that invites to meditation ; and he made haste to get into bed , with nothing clearer in his mind than a shapeless sense of having been trifled with . He ought not to have gone to a dancing party , to begin with , and then he certainly ought not to have attempted to dance ; so far he might have been master of the situation , and was responsible for it ; but he was , over and above this , aware of not having wished to do either , of having been wrought upon against his convictions to do both . He regarded now with supreme loathing a fantastic purpose which he had formed while tramping round on those women 's dresses , of privately taking lessons in dancing , and astonishing Miss Graham at the next ball where they met . Miss Graham ?