midnight
Amherst knew that this was the answer with which his plea would be met ; knew , moreover , that the plea was given a hearing simply because his judges deemed it so pitiably easy to refute . But the knowledge , once he had begun to speak , fanned his argument to a white heat of pleading , since , with failure so plainly ahead , small concessions and compromises were not worth making . Reason would be wasted on all ; but eloquence might at least prevail with Bessy ... * * * * * When , late that night , he went upstairs after long pacings of the garden , he was surprised to see a light in her room . She was not given to midnight study , and fearing that she might be ill he knocked at her door . There was no answer , and after a short pause he turned the handle and entered . In the great canopied Westmore couch , her arms flung upward and her hands clasped beneath her head , she lay staring fretfully at the globe of electric light which hung from the centre of the embossed and gilded ceiling . Seen thus , with the soft curves of throat and arms revealed , and her face childishly set in a cloud of loosened hair , she looked no older than Cicely -- and , like Cicely , inaccessible to grown-up arguments and the stronger logic of experience .