midnight
... He has ... followed me ! '' ... The disturbed novelist , as a man in a dream , turned , retraced his steps , and closed the outer door of the flat . Then , rubbing his chin more vigorously than ever and only desisting from this exercise to fumble in his dishevelled hair , he walked back into the study , whose Athenean calm had thus mysteriously been violated . Two minutes to midnight ; the most respectable flat in respectable Westminster ; a lonely and very abstracted novelist -- and a pale-faced , beautiful woman , enveloped in costly furs , sitting staring with fearful eyes straight before her . This was such a scene as his sense of the proprieties and of the probabilities could never have permitted Henry Leroux to create . His visitor kept moistening her dry lips and swallowing , emotionally . Standing at a discreet distance from her : -- `` Madam , '' began Leroux , nervously .