midnight
`` Yes , indeed , '' Theresa almost hysterically repeated . For here -- if anywhere -- was her chance , as she recognized . Never again might she be thus near to him , alone with him -- the normal routine made it wholly improbable . -- And at midnight too . For the unaccustomed lateness of the hour undoubtedly added to her ferment , provoking in her obscure and novel hopes and hungers . Hence she blindly and -- her action viewed from a certain angle -- quite heroically precipitated herself . Heroically , because the odds were hopelessly adverse , her equipment , whether of natural or artificial , being so conspicuously slender .