four o'clock in the
morning
You got more vigor somehow , into the actual construction of the thing , if you could make it express something quite independently of color and texture . Rehearsal was dismissed a little early that first night , and she was back in her room by eleven . Arrived there , she took off her outer clothes , sat down cross-legged on the floor , and went to work . When at last , with a little sigh , and a tremulously smiling acknowledgment of fatigue , she got up and looked at her watch , it was four o'clock in the morning . She 'd had one of those experiences that every artist can remember a few of in his life , when it is impossible for anything to go wrong ; when each tentative experiment accomplishes not only its purpose , but another unsuspected purpose as well ; when the vision miraculously betters itself in the execution ; when the only difficulty is that which the hands have in the purely mechanical operation of keeping up . She was destined later , of course , even during the achievement of this first success , to learn the comparative rarity of those hours . Though , as she looked back on it afterward , the whole of this first job seemed to have been done with a kind of miraculous facility she could n't account for .