midnight
At length it became clear that the maiden was hiding herself . Caius ceased to hope that he would meet her by chance , because he knew he would already have done so if it were not willed otherwise . Then his mind grew restless again , and impatient ; he could not even imagine where she could lie hidden , or what possible reason there could be for a life of uncomfortable concealment . Caius had not allowed either O'Shea or Madame Le Maître to suspect that in his stumble he had involuntarily seen his companion on the midnight journey . He did not think that the sea-maid herself knew that he had seen her there . He might have been tempted now to believe that the vision was some bright illusion , if its reality had not been proved by the fact that Madame Le Maître knew that he had a companion , and that O'Shea had staked much that he should not take that long moonlight walk by her side . Since the day on which he had become sure that the sea-maid had such close and real connection with human beings that he met every day , he had ceased to have those strange and uncomfortable ideas about her , which , in half his moods , relegated her into the region of freaks practised upon mortals by the denizens of the unseen , or , still farther , into the region of dreams that have no reality .