midnight
She had not even the grace to note that I had taken a little too much to drink that night ... . But over all this part of my life I prefer to pass as quickly as may be expedient . I remembered , anyway , after Gillian had gone from my room , to write Bettie Hamlyn a post-card . It was no longer , strictly speaking , the twenty-third , but considerably after midnight , of course . Still , it was the writing regularly when I loathed writing letters that counted with Bettie , I reflected ; and virtually I was writing on the twenty-third , and besides , Bettie would never know . And thereafter Gillian Hardress made almost no concealment of her feeling toward me , or employed at best the flimsiest of disguises . All that winter she wrote to me daily , and , when the same roof sheltered us , would slip the scribblings into my hand at odd moments , but preferably before her husband 's eyes .