Midnight
When it is lighted and the weather shut out , it is only left to him to listen . But they find that however dejected and ill he is , he brightens when a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and being sure that everything is ready to receive her . Poor pretence as it is , these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him . Midnight comes , and with it the same blank . The carriages in the streets are few , and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there are none , unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement . Upon this wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is like looking at intense darkness . If any distant sound be audible in this case , it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that , and all is heavier than before .