midnight
It was an hour of struggle on his part and of implacable resolution on mine . Nothing but such hardness on my part would have served me . Had I faltered once he would have won me over , and the tale of my sleepless nights been repeated . I did not falter ; and when the midnight stroke rang through the house that night , it separated by its peal , a sin-beclouded but human past from a future arid with solitude and bereft of the one possession to retain which my sin had been hidden . I was a father without a son -- as lonely and as desolate as though the separation between us were that of the grave I had merited and so weakly shunned . And thus I lived for a year . But I was not yet satisfied .