midnight
I was only beginning life in those days : I had had no experience of passion nor of suffering , and had rarely witnessed any manifestation of strong feeling in others ... . But the sincerity of this suffering , of this passion , impressed me . If it had not been for the manuscript in my hands , I might have thought that I had dreamed it all -- it was all so unlikely , and swooped by like a passing storm . I was till midnight reading the manuscript . It consisted of several sheets of letter-paper , closely covered with a large , irregular writing , almost without an erasure . Not a single line was quite straight , and one seemed in every one of them to feel the excited trembling of the hand that held the pen . Here follows what was in the manuscript .