midnight
Even Sue had passed him in the street with a cold stare and not a few of the other girls -- girls he had romped with many a night through the cool paths of Kennedy Square , had drawn their skirts aside as he passed lest he should foul them with his touch . But his courage had not wavered nor had his strength failed him . The same qualities that had made Richard stick to the motor were in his own blood . His delicately modelled slender fingers , white as ivory , and as sure as a pair of callipers -- so like his father 's -- and which as we watch him work so deftly arranging the colors on his palette , adjusting the oil-cup , trying the points of the brushes on his thumb-nail , gathering them in a sheaf in his left hand as they answer his purpose , had served him in more ways than one since he took that midnight ride back from his old home in Kennedy Square . These same hands that look so white and well-kept as he stands by his easel in the full glare of the gas-jets , had been his sole reliance during these days of toil and suffering . They had provided all the bread that had gone into his mouth , and every stitch of clothes that had covered his back . And they had not been over-particular as to how they had accomplished it nor at what hours or places .