nearly midnight
The Adept , by conquering passion and ignorance , attains a mastery over change , and so prolongs his life beyond any human limit . '' She begged Ulick not to forget to bring the book of magic which contained the oath of the Rosicrucians . It was now after eight , and they returned home , watching the white mists creeping up the blue fields . The sky was lucent as a crystal , and the purple would not die out of the west until nearly midnight . Evelyn would have liked to have stayed with him in the twilight , for as the landscape darkened , his strange figure grew symbolic , and his words , whether by beauty of verbal expression or the manner with which they were spoken , seemed to bring the unseen world nearer . The outside world seemed to slip back , to become subordinate as earth becomes subordinate to the sky when the stars come . Evelyn felt the life of the flesh in which Owen had placed her fall from her ; it became dissipated ; her life rose to the head , and looking into the mists she seemed to discover the life that haunts in the dark .