midnight
`` Will you let me have my way ? '' `` Could there be any question of that ? '' I replied , and to my astonishment found that we had somehow impulsively taken each other 's hands , as upon a serious bargain struck between us . The round moon was white and at its smallest , high overhead , when I stepped out of the phaeton in which Miss Elizabeth sent me back to Madame Brossard 's ; midnight was twanging from a rusty old clock indoors as I crossed the fragrant courtyard to my pavilion ; but a lamp still burned in the salon of the `` Grande Suite , '' a light to my mind more suggestive of the patient watcher than of the scholar at his tome . When my own lamp was extinguished , I set my door ajar , moved my bed out from the wall to catch whatever breeze might stir , `` composed myself for the night , '' as it used to be written , and lay looking out upon the quiet garden where a thin white haze was rising . If , in taking this coign of vantage , I had any subtler purpose than to seek a draught against the warmth of the night , it did not fail of its reward , for just as I had begun to drowse , the gallery steps creaked as if beneath some immoderate weight , and the noble form of Keredec emerged upon my field of vision . From the absence of the sound of footsteps I supposed him to be either barefooted or in his stockings .