midnight
He caught her hand and held it . `` I love you , and I forbid it . '' `` I _ must _ go , dear , '' answered she . `` I 've decided to take the midnight boat for Cincinnati . '' In the half darkness he gazed in stupefaction at her -- this girl of only seventeen calmly resolving upon and planning an adventure so daring , so impossible . As he had been born and bred in that western country where the very children have more independence than the carefully tamed grown people of the East , he ought to have been prepared for almost anything . But his father had undermined his courage and independence ; also his year in the East had given him somewhat different ideas of women .