about two o’clock in the morning
To him it was a field in which armies clashed , and the issue was uncertain ; but to her it was a field of inevitable defeat , strewn with the corpses of her hopes . For hours she would lie upon her couch in the night-watches , silent , alone , staring out of the window at the wide waste of snow in the pitiless moonlight . Thyrsis would have preferred to sleep in his own study , as he worked so late at night ; but Corydon begged him not to do this , she would rather be wakened , she said . So , on one occasion , he came over at about two o'clock in the morning , and found her sleeping , as he thought , and crawled into his own cot . He was just dozing off to sleep , when he heard what he thought was a stifled sob . He listened ; he thought that she was crying in her sleep . But then , as the sound grew clearer , he sat up .