midnight
Yet this was again followed by a new impatience of her husband 's want of insight into her ability to help him . Of course the poor fellow could not bear to worry her , could not bear to face such men as Calhoun , or even Poindexter -LRB- she added exultingly to herself -RRB- , but he might have sent her a line as he fled , only to prepare her to meet and combat the shame alone . It did not occur to her unsophisticated singleness of nature that she was accepting as an error of feeling what the world would call cowardly selfishness . At midnight the storm lulled and a few stars trembled through the rent clouds . Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness , and her country instincts , a little overlaid by the urban experiences of the last few years , came again to the surface . She felt the fresh , cool radiation from outlying , upturned fields , the faint , sad odors from dim stretches of pricking grain and quickening leaf , and wondered if at Los Cuervos it might be possible to reproduce the peculiar verdure of her native district . She beguiled her fancy by an ambitious plan of retrieving their fortunes by farming ; her comfortable tastes had lately rebelled against the homeless mechanical cultivation of these desolate but teeming Californian acres , and for a moment indulged in a vision of a vine-clad cottage home that in any other woman would have been sentimental .