midnight
When , after repeated trials , they warmed to their work , and got hold of something like the passion of their part , a listener might have acquitted them of all play-acting , and broken in himself to prevent bloodshed . For they both started from the assumption that the tones of the stage must be gradually built up into power from those used in ordinary speech , and so they avoided the least taint of staginess , and were on their way to become rather better actors than the best we have just now . Leland 's temperament was not of a nature to persuade him to perpetual effort in any direction ; and so , whilst Barndale worked , the other amateur relieved vacuity with billiards . It got into a settled habit with him at last to leave Barndale nightly at his comedy , and to return to the house-boat at an hour little short of midnight . He would find Barndale still at work writing by the light of a lamp grown dim with incrustations of self-immolated insects . Moths fluttered to this light in incredible numbers , and literal thousands of lives were thus sacrificed nightly at the drama 's shrine . It was nearly midnight , and as black as a wolfs mouth , when Leland sculled up from the ` Swan ' to spend his last night but one aboard the house-boat .