midnight
He remembered how bitter and morose he had grown during his stay at his brother 's studio when Katharine Gaylord was working there , and how he had wounded Adriance on the night of his last concert in New York . He had sat there in the box while his brother and Katharine were called back again and again after the last number , watching the roses go up over the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano , brooding , in his sullen boy 's heart , upon the pride those two felt in each other 's work -- spurring each other to their best and beautifully contending in song . The footlights had seemed a hard , glittering line drawn sharply between their life and his ; a circle of flame set about those splendid children of genius . He walked back to his hotel alone and sat in his window staring out on Madison Square until long after midnight , resolving to beat no more at doors that he could never enter and realizing more keenly than ever before how far this glorious world of beautiful creations lay from the paths of men like himself . He told himself that he had in common with this woman only the baser uses of life . Everett 's week in Cheyenne stretched to three , and he saw no prospect of release except through the thing he dreaded . The bright , windy days of the Wyoming autumn passed swiftly .