midnight
The recollection was keen as a knife when Max entered the eating-room , sat down and ordered a drink with the supreme indifference of disillusion . Six months ago he would have trembled to find himself alone in such a place ; to-night he was beyond such a commonplace as fear . He smiled again cynically , emptied his glass and looked about him . His first experience of the place had been in the hours succeeding midnight , when the quarter hummed with its unsavory life ; but now it was early , the lights were not yet at their fullest , the waiters had not as yet taken on their nocturnal air of briskness . In one corner three men were engrossed in a game of cards , in another a thin girl of fifteen sat with her arm round the neck of a boy scarce older than herself , whispering jests into his ear , at which they both laughed in coarse low murmurs , while in the middle of the room , with her back turned to him , a woman in a tight black dress and feathered hat was eating a meal of poached eggs . In a vague way , absorbed in his own thoughts , Max fell to studying this solitary woman , until something in her impassivity , something in the sphinx-like calm with which she went through the business of her meal , blent with his imaginings , and he suddenly found her placed beside Blake in the possession of his thoughts -- an integral part of their joint lives . In a flash of memory the large black hat , the opulent figure took place within his consciousness and , answering to a new instinct , he rose and took an involuntary step in the woman 's direction .