midnight
Already , as she shrank fastidiously into the corner of a third-class travelling-carriage , her project seemed to have reached its original and notable materialization . Chapters passed before her eyes as they do sometimes in dreams , full of charm and beauty ; the book went through every phase of comedy and pathos , always ringing true . Little half-formed sentences of admirable art rose before her mind , and she hastily barred them out , feeling that she was not ready yet , and it would be mad misery to want them and to have forgotten them . The thought of what she meant to do possessed her wholly , though , and she resigned herself to dreams of the most effective arrangement of her material , the selection of her publisher , the long midnight hours alone with Buddha , in which she should give herself up to the enthralment of speaking with that voice which she could summon , that elusive voice which she lived only , only to be the medium for -- that precious voice which would be heard one day , yes , and listened-to . She was so freshly impressed with the new life-lights , curious , tawdry , fascinating , revolting , above all sharp and undisguised , of the world she had left , that she saw them already projected with a verisimilitude which , if she had possessed the art of it , would have made her indeed famous . Her own power of realization , assured her on this point -- nobody could see , not divine but _ see _ , as she did , without being able to reproduce ; the one implied the other . She fingered feverishly the strap of the little hand-bag in her lap , and satisfied herself by unlocking it with a key that hung on a String inside her jacket .