midnight
For six months I had been in New York living with Aunt Clara in Uncle Jonathan Van Eyek 's old house down on Gramercy just to go into Nickols ' life with him . I went about in the white lights of both Murray Hill and Greenwich Village for about one hundred and eighty-five evenings , and then I fled back to my garden and the poplars -- and my anxiety . I thought I had come home to be free and I found the same old chains . And then had come Nickols ' telegram of pursuit in the midnight after I had stood by in the shadow and watched a strong man pray and a weak man battle with himself . I was frightened , frightened at the future , and what was going to help me ? `` I do n't actually understand a word of Gregory Goodloe 's sermons , really understand them , I mean , but it helps me to see that somebody truly believes that there is something somewhere that will straighten out tangles -- in life as well as thread . '' Harriet broke in on my still hunt into my own and other people 's inner shrines as she snapped a bit of tangled purple silk thread , knotted it and began all over again on the violet .