midnight
Out with the sand he had been regal ; now , like a slave , he strutted self-conscious and reduced . But this imperial standard of the Desert stayed a little time beside him , its purity focussing judgment like a lens . The specks of smaller emotions left it clear at first , and as his eye wandered vaguely over the people assembled in the dining-room , it was arrested with a vivid shock upon two figures at the little table facing him . He had forgotten Vance , the Birmingham man who sought the North at midnight with a pocket compass . He now saw him again , with an intuitive discernment entirely fresh . Before memory brought up her clouding associations , some brilliance flashed a light upon him . `` That man , '' Henriot thought , `` might have come with me .