midnight
The conscripts , too , going to their death -- for how few of them ever returned ? -- leaving behind all hope , all freedom , passing to starvation and cruelty , at last to be cut down by the Arab , or left dying of illness in the desert , they took her gifts with sullen faces . Her beautiful freedom was in such contrast to their torture , slavery of a direful kind . But as again and again the kavasses came and opened midnight doors and snatched away the young men , her influence had grown so fast that her presence brought comfort , and she helped to assuage the grief of the wailing women . She even urged upon them that philosophy of their own , which said `` Malaish '' to all things -- the `` It is no matter , '' of the fated Hamlet . In time she began to be grateful that an apathetic resignation , akin to the quiet of despair , was the possession of their race . She was far from aware that something in their life , of their philosophy , was affecting her understanding .