midnight
The flood of joy that came over her drowned her pride . For an hour she sat reading the letters , and they brought her so near to her lover that it seemed that she must reach out and touch him . She was drawn by an irresistible impulse to her telephone that sat on her desk . It seemed crazy to expect to reach Neal Ward at midnight , but as she rose from the floor with the letters slipping from her lap and with the impulse like a cord drawing her , she saw , or thought she saw , standing by the desk , a part of the fluttering shadows , a girl -- a quaint , old-fashioned girl in her teens , with -- but then she remembered the dream girl her lover had described in the letter she had just been reading , and she understood the source of her delusion . And yet there the vision moved by the telephone , smiling and beckoning ; then it faded , and there came rushing back to her memory a host of recollections of her childhood , and of some one she could not place , and then a memory of danger , -- and then it was all gone and there stood the desk and the telephone and the room as it was . She shuddered slightly , and then remembered that she had just been through two great nervous experiences -- the story of her father 's changed life , and the return of her lover . And she was a level-headed , strong-nerved girl .