midnight
How horrified and amazed they would be to learn that the chauffeur she had brought into the household was in reality a government detective , and that she , their daughter , had been a witness of his tragic death . What would they think when they learned about her part in this gruesome drama that had just been enacted ? They , serene in their trust in her , supposing she was at the home of one of her girl friends , were peacefully asleep in their quiet apartment . How horror-stricken her mother would be if she could have seen her daughter at this moment , alone at midnight in a mountain shack , one girl among a band of strange men -- and two men stretched dead on the floor . And Frederic ! Always her perturbed imaginings led back to Frederic , to the terrible fate that lay in store for him , to the awfulness of war that had put between them an impassable gulf of blood and guilt and treachery that , in spite of their love for each other , kept them at cross purposes and made them enemies . Why , she vaguely wondered , must governments disagree and start wars and make men hate and kill each other ?