midnight
she moaned : `` Death -- and then _ this _ ! -- If but it need not have been told me ! If I might but have kept the _ memory _ of my happiness ! '' Only the stars and the pitying angels looked down on the fierce conflict of grief and love and disillusion with which her desolate young soul wrestled alone through the long , midnight vigil . How should she separate these two beautiful faiths which had been enthroned as one in the happy depths of her guileless heart , without perilling her very trust in God ! Yet , as the sad day dawned over the hills and sea , she knew that God was still in His Heaven , behind the clouds -- while she clung as a drowning mariner -- the more desperately for her weakness -- to the spar of this faith in the wreck of her happiness , though the love to which her whole being had moved in rhythmic content was as a lost star , glimmering uncertainly behind the mists . But through the desolate night-watches the Lady of the Bernardini in the ante-chamber of the Queen had been agonizing in prayer for her until thought was spent ; and now she had moved out upon the loggia and stood there waiting for the dawn that seemed long-deferred , in a half-conscious wonder that there were no sorrows great enough to stay Nature 's punctual recurrences -- that to-day and to-morrow there would still be dawns and sunsets , whatever happened to the souls of men .