midnight
-- had put herself down on the man 's level with a naiveté which showed her unconscious of ever having been higher up . She had confessed to weaknesses , as though she were of no finer clay than himself , and spoke of being penitent , when the tragedy lay in the fact that a woman should have anything to repent of . The minutes went by , but he sat rigid , with hands clinched before him , and eyes fixed in a kind of hypnotic stare on the cluster of lights , taking no account of time or place . Throughout the house there was the stillness of midnight , broken only by the rumble of a carriage or the clatter of a motor in the street . The silence was the more ghostly owing to the circumstance that throughout the empty rooms lights were still flaring uselessly , welcoming his return . Presently there came a sound -- faint , soft , swift , like the rustle of wings , or a weird spirit footfall . Though it was scarcely audible , it was certain that something was astir .