midnight
It was near midnight : The company gathered in a famous city studio were under the impression , diligently diffused in the world , that the end of the century is a time of license if not of decadence . The situation had its own piquancy , partly in the surprise of some of those assembled at finding themselves in bohemia , partly in a flutter of expectation of seeing something on the border-line of propriety . The hour , the place , the anticipation of the lifting of the veil from an Oriental and ancient art , gave them a titillating feeling of adventure , of a moral hazard bravely incurred in the duty of knowing life , penetrating to its core . Opportunity for this sort of fruitful experience being rare outside the metropolis , students of good and evil had made the pilgrimage to this midnight occasion from less-favored cities .