midnight
`` Come in , '' she whispered , coloring with pleasure under his gaze ; and she made haste to shut the door after him , with a luxurious impatience of the cold . She led the way into the room from which she had come , and set down the lamp on the corner of the piano , while he slipped off his overcoat and swung it over the end of the sofa . They drew up chairs to the stove , in which the smouldering fire , revived by the opened draft , roared and snapped . It was midnight , as the sharp strokes of a wooden clock declared from the kitchen , and they were alone together , and all the other inmates of the house were asleep . The situation , scarcely conceivable to another civilization , is so common in ours , where youth commands its fate and trusts solely to itself , that it may be said to be characteristic of the New England civilization wherever it keeps its simplicity . It was not stolen or clandestine ; it would have interested every one , but would have shocked no one in the village if the whole village had known it ; all that a girl 's parents ordinarily exacted was that they should not be waked up . `` Ugh ! ''