About midnight
The drinking at the White Horse , where the literary circle met of which Lomax had been so long an ornament , had been of late going from bad to worse . The households of the wits concerned were up in arms ; neighbourhood and police began to assert themselves . One night the trembling Dora waited hour after hour for her father . About midnight he staggered in , maddened with drink and fresh from a skirmish with the police . Finding her there waiting for him , pale and silent , he did what he had never done before under any stress of trouble -- struck and swore at her . Dora sank down with a groan , and in another minute Lomax was dashing his head against the wall , vowing that he would beat his brains out . In the hours that followed , Dora 's young soul was stretched as it were on a rack , from which it rose , not weakened , but with new powers and a loftier stature .