midnight
I judged this by the way her eyes rested upon me in the darkness . It embarrassed me a little , and to turn the matter off I continued genially : `` Do let us sit down together comfortably somewhere , and you will tell me all about her . '' Miss Tita made no resistance to this . We found a bench less secluded , less confidential , as it were , than the one in the arbor ; and we were still sitting there when I heard midnight ring out from those clear bells of Venice which vibrate with a solemnity of their own over the lagoon and hold the air so much more than the chimes of other places . We were together more than an hour , and our interview gave , as it struck me , a great lift to my undertaking . Miss Tita accepted the situation without a protest ; she had avoided me for three months , yet now she treated me almost as if these three months had made me an old friend . If I had chosen I might have inferred from this that though she had avoided me she had given a good deal of consideration to doing so .