midnight
How meagre and starved the past appeared in comparison with this abundant present ! The noise , the crowd , the promiscuity beneath her eyes symbolized the glare and movement of her life . Every moment of her days was packed with excitement and exhilaration . Everything amused her : the long hours of bargaining and debate with dress-makers and jewellers , the crowded lunches at fashionable restaurants , the perfunctory dash through a picture-show or the lingering visit to the last new milliner ; the afternoon motor-rush to some leafy suburb , where tea and musics and sunset were hastily absorbed on a crowded terrace above the Seine ; the whirl home through the Bois to dress for dinner and start again on the round of evening diversions ; the dinner at the Nouveau Luxe or the Café de Paris , and the little play at the Capucines or the Variétés , followed , because the night was `` too lovely , '' and it was a shame to waste it , by a breathless flight back to the Bois , with supper in one of its lamp-hung restaurants , or , if the weather forbade , a tumultuous progress through the midnight haunts where `` ladies '' were not supposed to show themselves , and might consequently taste the thrill of being occasionally taken for their opposites . As the varied vision unrolled itself , Undine contrasted it with the pale monotony of her previous summers . The one she most resented was the first after her marriage , the European summer out of whose joys she had been cheated by her own ignorance and Ralph 's perversity . They had been free then , there had been no child to hamper their movements , their money anxieties had hardly begun , the face of life had been fresh and radiant , and she had been doomed to waste such opportunities on a succession of ill-smelling Italian towns .