midnight
Then he reflected that as he was away from Rome , she was , of course , unable to keep that promise . He had not seen her since that night , for she had passed straight through the atrium with her mother while he was assisting the slaves to take up their burdens . He could not help feeling an admiration for her steadfastness in this new Faith that she had taken up . By the side of her livelier sister he had regarded her as a quiet and retiring girl , and was sure that to her these midnight outings by stealth must have been very terrible , and that only from the very strongest sense of duty would she have undertaken them . Now her open avowal of Christianity , when she must have known what were the penalties that the confession entailed , seemed to him heroic . `` It must be a strange religion that could thus influence a timid girl , '' he said to himself . `` My mother killed herself because she would not survive the disaster that had fallen upon her people and her gods ; but her death was deemed by all Britons to be honourable .