midday
`` I should n't like to say what _ she _ is ! '' she chuckled , surveying a tall woman dressed conspicuously in white , with paint in the hollows of her cheeks , who was always late , and always attended by a shabby female follower , at which remark Susan blushed , and wondered why her aunt said such things . Lunch went on methodically , until each of the seven courses was left in fragments and the fruit was merely a toy , to be peeled and sliced as a child destroys a daisy , petal by petal . The food served as an extinguisher upon any faint flame of the human spirit that might survive the midday heat , but Susan sat in her room afterwards , turning over and over the delightful fact that Mr. Venning had come to her in the garden , and had sat there quite half an hour while she read aloud to her aunt . Men and women sought different corners where they could lie unobserved , and from two to four it might be said without exaggeration that the hotel was inhabited by bodies without souls . Disastrous would have been the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded something heroic of human nature , but tragedies come in the hungry hours . Towards four o'clock the human spirit again began to lick the body , as a flame licks a black promontory of coal .