midnight
`` Phryne before the Judges '' -- or Long 's `` Thisbe ? '' She languorously waved a floral fan of crimson carnations , and recited with all of Siddons ' grace and Rachel 's fire selections from a book of poems , that were so many dynamite bombs of vice smothered in roses . Amid tumultuous applause , she gave as encore something that contained a fragment of Feydeau , and its closing words woke up my drowsy soul , like a clap of thunder : ` Ce que les poetes appellent l'amour , et les moralistes l'adultere ! ' Leo , there is a moral somnambulism more frightful than that which leads to midnight promenades on the combs of roofs , and the borders of Goat Island ; so I wiped my tears away , and after that day , began to read the billet doux and wear the flowers of my ` consolation prize ' . '' `` You do not love him , and your marriage will degrade you in your own estimation . Your bridal vows will be perjury , an insult to your God , and a foul terrible wrong against the man who trusts your truthfulness . According to our church , wedlock is a ` holy ordinance ' ; and to me an unloving wife is unhallowed ; is a blot on her sex , only a few degrees removed from unmarried mothers .