midnight
Ann Howland , as the wife of an eminent politician , had long since cultivated the art of mental suppleness and had learned to fascinate the most diverse intelligences and egos . Gisela , who was always warmly responsive to personal charm when not too obviously insincere , enjoyed the hour on the ice so exclusively devoted to her by the distinguished American and went to bed that night well content to bury the war during this period of necessary rest , grateful for this fresh current that swept her for the moment into one of those old backwaters of mere femininity . Mrs. Prentiss had not related a single anecdote of the front , nor alluded to the fact that she was a Red Cross nurse . But she and Kate Terriss sat up until midnight . They were both women capable of seizing those rare opportunities for service that flit past so many intelligent women lacking initiative , and here was one that the most clear-thinking man would have envied . It was a piece of unbelievable luck ; Gisela Döring was not only here to their hand in a relaxed and friendly mood , but she possessed charm combined with a great intelligence and an iron will : she was far more the obvious leader than they had inferred from her work , and they guessed something of the powerful influence she must quietly have obtained over the women of Germany . Mrs. Prentiss had by no means approved of her at an earlier period , for she had shrewdly suspected that it was the handsome German governess , not the high-born Irma , who thwarted her designs upon the most attractive `` foreigner '' she had ever met .