2
a.m.
He knew her as one knows the countryside in which one has grown up , where every feature of the scene has become a habit of the perceptions . And yet he had also a strange sensation of seeing her newly , of seeing her for the first time in his life and estimating her afresh . In a flash he had compared her , in this boudoir , with Lady Massulam in Lady Massulam 's bungalow . In a flash all the queer , frightening romance of 2 a.m. in Frinton had swept through his mind . Well , she had not the imposingness nor the mystery of Lady Massulam , nor perhaps the challenge of Lady Massulam ; she was very much more prosaic to him . But still he admitted that she had an effect on him , that he reacted to her presence , that she was at any rate at least as incalculable as Lady Massulam , and that there might be bits of poetry gleaming in her prose , and that after a quarter of a century he had not arrived at a final judgment about her . Withal Lady Massulam had a quality which she lacked , -- he did not know what the quality was , but he knew that it excited him in an unprecedented manner and that he wanted it and would renounce it with regret .