midnight
In the solitude which was all the war had left her , she recognized this , and , since she was normally a woman of kind and generous impulses , she suffered in the realization of the spoiled and mutilated lives for which she was responsible . Not that she would have acted differently were the same choice presented to her again . She did not _ want _ to hurt people , but the primitive maternal instinct , which was the pivot of her being , blinded her to the claims of others if those claims reacted adversely on her son . Only now , in the bitterness of defeat , as she looked back upon her midnight interview with Garth Trent , she was conscious of a sick repugnance . It had not been a pleasant thing , that thrusting of a knife into an old wound . This , too , she had done for Tim 's sake . The pity of it was that Garth had suffered needlessly -- uselessly !