midnight
When from an outlying table a woman , grown louder of laughter than she realized , interrupted this quiet , a score of faces turned angrily in her direction , rebuking her with their glances . But the music went on and the great crowd which had a few moments before been abandoning itself to noise and riot now found itself listening -- listening in a sort of rapt trance -- with its many gazes converging on a slender young man . His pallid face and cameo features seemed exalted and his eyes burned strangely under the dark locks that fell across his forehead . They did not hear the first peal of the midnight clock , until the sudden darkness which that stroke heralded reminded them of the hour . The place which had blazed with light was now as black as some sea-floor cavern , and that should have been the signal for a hundred horns and rattlers and shouts of greeting , and the reaching of hands to meet and grasp other hands across the tables . But in Kenley 's it was quiet except for those peals of music that came from the platform . At last the strains ended in silence , and a deep breath passed among the tables as though from one composite pair of lungs .