two o'clock in the
morning
Five steps from the lower floor there is a landing , and upon this landing there is a tall Dutch clock , so placed as to offer a very good hiding place behind it to any one anxious to gaze unobserved down the hall . But to reach the clock one has to pass a window , and as this looks south , and was upon this night open to the moonlight , I felt that the situation demanded circumspection . I , therefore , paused when I reached the last step above the platform , and listened intently before proceeding further . There was no noise ; all was quiet , as a respectable house should be at two o'clock in the morning . Yet from the hall below came an undefinable something which made me feel that she was there ; a breathing influence that woke every nervous sensibility within me , and made my heart-beats so irregular that I tried to stop them lest my own presence should be betrayed . She was there , a creeping , baleful figure , blotting the moonshine with her tall shadow , as she passed , panther-like , to and fro before that closed door , or crouched against the wall in the same attitude of listening which I myself assumed . Or so I pictured her as I clung to the balustrade above , asking myself how I could cross that strip of moonlight separating me from that vantage-point I longed to gain .