midnight
Then , having dressed quickly , she ran back to the kitchen and made the coffee and boiled the eggs while the other lodgers were still sleeping . Sometimes the mother of one of the art students would join her over the gas range , but usually her neighbours slept late and then darted through the hall in kimonos , with tumbled hair , to a hurried breakfast at the kitchen table . Her life was so busy that there was little time for anxiety , and less for futile and painful dwelling upon the past . To get through the day as best she could , to start the children well and in a good humour , to make herself useful , if not indispensable , to Madame , to return with a mind clear and fresh enough to give Fanny and Archibald intelligent lessons , to sew on their clothes or her own until midnight , and then to drop into bed , with aching limbs and a peaceful brain , too tired even to dream -- these things made the life that she looked forward to , week after week , month after month , year after year . It was a hard life , as Miss Polly often remarked , but hard or soft , her strength was equal to it , her health was good , her interest in her work and in her children never flagged for a minute . Only on soft spring days , coming home in the dusk , she would sometimes pass carts filled with hyacinths , and in a wave the memory of Arthur and of her first love would rush over her . Then she would see Arthur 's face , gentle , protective , tender , as it had looked on that last evening , and for an instant her lost girlhood and her girlhood 's dream would envelop her like the fragrance of flowers .