midnight
Yet he must endure , witness , cloak it . He must wait , helpless and inactive , the issue of it . He must lie on the rack , drawn one way by love of her , drawn the other by daily and hourly suspicions , suspicions so strong and so terrible that even love could hardly cast them out . For the voice he had heard at midnight , and the horrid laughter , which greeted the words of sacrilege -- were facts . And her subjection to Basterga , the man of evil past the evil name , was a fact . And her terror and her avowal were facts . He could not doubt , he could not deny them .