midnight
The weather was wild . It had been wet all day , and the rain came smashing down , driven by the great gusts of a genuine westerly gale . Consequently there were fewer passengers than usual , and those people who by choice or compulsion had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the flickering gas-lamps . But the porters , and the friends engaged in the ceremony of seeing-off , and the loungers , and the bookstall clerks -- these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate inconveniences before midnight . As for me , I was quite alone with my thoughts . At least , I began by being alone . As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to Paris , a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the baggage-office .