A little thought on time in the novel

Bizarre - lost the intro to this post.
No matter.

On the 'novel' front, finally have some feedback, & mostly positive.  I feel as though I've been working in a vacuum for so long.  It's a good thing.  Very motivating actually, so why the prevarication? 
Thinking, mostly.  Thinking about timing and what it implies for characters, events and in a broader sense, what it's saying about the entire atmosphere of the novel.  The implications of 'dead of night', 'the dark before dawn', 'half an hour before sunrise' are quite interesting in the novel's context.
Days & nights are divided into hours that are safe and not so safe, in a metaphysical sense.  Dead of night is, in some ways, safer than the dark before dawn which implies a desperation the dead of night doesn't have.  Half an hour before sunrise holds out way more hope than the dead of night which seems simply flat: darkness before & behind and no life anywhere.  Of course it's the time of ghosties and ghoulies, but also of nothing else.  No action because it's neither possible nor something you'd want to do.  We might like staying up late, but without artificial light, there's not much you're going to get done.
The dark before dawn is where things start stirring, birds rustle and ruffle and let forth brief bursts of song which become fuller in the half hour before sunrise.  Insects stirs, as does the wind, shuffling leaves and dust and branches.  The world itself stirs and begins to shake itself ready for the day.
Things that happen in the dead of night are generally not good.  'Night, the eldest of things' (Milton, Paradise Lost) sees a damn sight more than most would want to know about - in this novel at least, implying transgression (because if someone hadn't seen them, there wouldn't be a novel to write, now, would there?), and the transgression, inadevertent, leads to everything else.
I have to wonder, though it's already written, will the novel end in the dark or in the morning.
Timing is important in a novel.  The timing of life and death and the actions that bring them about. 
This is what I've been thinking about this morning.