midnight
How shall men ever repay the debt they owe to wifehood and motherhood ? How shall civilization itself sufficiently honor the womanhood that alone has made it possible ? But while Richard Temple knew that there was never a murmur at her lot in Mary 's heart any more than there was complaining upon her lips , he knew also how earnestly she longed for a better place in the world for him , how intensely ambitious she was that he should find fit opportunity and make the most of it in the way of winning that recognition at the hands of men which her loving soul knew to be his right and his due . It was with gladness , therefore , that he had gone to her after midnight with his news . It was with joy that he had wakened her out of her sleep and told her of the good that had come to him . She wept as she sat there on the side of her bed and listened while the moonlight , sifting through the vines that she had trained up over the window of the miner 's hut , cast a soft fleecy veil over her person , in which Temple thought an angel might rejoice . But her tears were not born of sorrow .