I did not myself feel in the least sleepy; and each time I went softly over to look at the patient, which I did about every ten minutes, I could see that Miss Trelawny was keenly alert.

Every quarter of an hour one or other of the policemen looked in through the partly opened door.

Each time both Miss Trelawny and I said through our mufflers, "all right," and the door was closed again.
As the time wore on, the silence and the darkness seemed to increase.
The circle of light on the ceiling was still there, but it seemed less brilliant than at first.

The green edging of the lamp-shade became like Maori greenstone rather than emerald.

The sounds of the night without the house, and the starlight spreading pale lines along the edges of the window-cases, made the pall of black within more solemn and more mysterious.
We heard the clock in the corridor chiming the quarters with its silver bell till two o'clock; and then a strange feeling came over me.