midnight
Her very death had given him a paradoxical certitude of her immortality . Yet this recognition of her presence , on some plane of spiritual apprehension , was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of her loss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty . That heavenly lover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance to the earthly lover . That the eyes of the spirit could touch her , brought no healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk in Theophil 's study to Jenny 's empty chair , no touch of her to the hands that were so idle and empty now . Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her . There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places . These could be taken care of , her little desk could still be kept as she had left it , with her pen laid down as she had last laid it .