midnight
It is very foolish , very childish of me , but I can not get it out of my head , that I said I liked him the least . It haunts me still when I stand by his bedside , when I see his poor cheeks redder than mine were when they wore their rouge , when I notice the hot drought of his parched lips . It haunts me still with disproportioned remorse through all the weeks of his illness . For the time stretches itself out to weeks -- abnormal , weary weeks , when the boundaries of day and night confound themselves -- when each steps over into his brother 's territories -- when it grows to feel natural , wakefully , to watch the candle 's ghostly shadows , flickering at midnight , and to snatch fitful sleeps at noon ! to watch the autumnal dawns coldly breaking in the gloom of the last , and to have the stars for companions . His insane exposure of himself to the rage of the storm , on the night of the picnic , has combined , with previous dissipation , to lower his system so successfully as to render him an easy booty to the low , crawling fever , which , as so often in autumn , is stealing sullenly about , to lay hold on such as through any previous cause of weakness are rendered the more liable to its attacks . Slowly it saps the foundations of his being .