midnight
There has been no star visible in the heavens , nor any glimpse of a moon for four nights . The sun is the dimmest red ball in the daytime , a danger-signal lantern , seen through dirty glass . There is a yeast at work in the Solitary 's mind It is as if the material universe being cut away from him -- save just this solid remnant of it in which he lounges -- there were space found for something not belonging to it to draw near him . Over and over again the lonely man had read his father 's last letter , and now in the hot , oppressive midnight it repeated itself in his mind : ` At my father 's death a change began to work in my opinions . I had convinced myself that this life was all that man enjoyed or suffered , but I began to be conscious that I was under tutelage . I began -- at first faintly and with much doubting -- to think that my father 's spirit and my own were in communion . I knew that he had loved me fondly , and to me he had always seemed a pattern of what is admirable in man .