nearly midnight
`` All right , '' I said , reaching up to stroke her cheek in time with the music . `` See if you can feel your way -- lightly , now -- down the same path in my left arm . '' She could , but not quite as lightly as I would have liked . We played with it until nearly midnight , by which time she had used what I can only call her sense of perception to feel her way through a good part of my nerves and viscera . Some of it was exquisitely painful , but from observing my flinching when she hurt me , Pheola pretty quickly found out how to ignore the synapses that fired pain through my brain . At last I raised my head from her lap . `` You 're doing great , '' I said .