midnight
Instead of sacrificing her lover to her people , she could serve both by the same deed . She was wildly impatient for the moment when she could lay before Davidge the splendid information she had secured at the expense of a few negligible lies . If they should cost her a decade in purgatorial torments , she would feel that they were worth it . She reached Washington at a little after eleven and Grinden Hall before midnight . Now as she stood on the portico and looked across the river at the night-lit city , she felt such a pride as she had never known . She waved a salutation to the wraith of a town , her mind , if not her lips , voicing the words : `` You owe me something , old capital . You 'll never put up any statues to me or carve my name on any tablets , but I 'm doing something for you that will mean more than anybody will ever realize . ''