nine o'clock
She wanted the quiet to reconcile this new , this terrible , this throat-throbbing sweetness with the Medean fury which had flung her , a shuddering , choking mass upon that rooming-house floor . She wanted to feel again and again the quick , ecstatic brash that could race in a wave over her when she held this warm rose of life to her breast . At just before nine there was a wordless round of inspection from the white starched shirt waist surmounted with the spectacles and the black-ribbon guard , a final look-in from the nurse whose face was Swedishly blond and pink from chapping , a bottle of milk placed in the small refrigerator , and the little bundle on the pillow covered with an extra thickness of murky blanket . At nine o'clock the lights went out just as Lilly had slid into her own gown . She tiptoed to the door , barefooted , locking it and thereby violating a rule of the institution . There must have been a moon somewhere behind housetops , because through the three shadeless windows a sort of gleam whitely powdered the silence . She was suddenly full of fear there in the darkness and the aloneness , and ran over to the cot for the miracle of that soft body to her flesh .