three o'clock
I think that he was rather sorry for me , having detected a gloominess in my view of life and a tendency to moody and fretful introspection . Once or twice he referred , in passing jest , to the difference of national characteristics , the German tendency to make love by crying -LRB- so he put it -RRB- as contrasted with the laughing philosophy of his own country . At the end he apologized for talking so much , and pointed out to me a photograph of Coralie that stood on the mantelpiece more than half-hidden by letters and papers , saying , `` I suppose she set me off ; somehow she seems to me a sort of embodiment of the thing . '' It was three o'clock when I left him ; even then I went reluctantly , traversing again in my mind the field that his tongue had easily and lightly covered , and reverting to the girl who , as he said , was a sort of embodiment of the thing . The phrase was definite enough for its purpose , and struck home with an undeniable truth . He and she were the sort of people to live in that sort of world , and to stand as its representatives . A feeling came over me that it was a fair fine world , where life need not be a struggle , where a man need not live alone , where he would not be striving always after what he could never achieve , waging always a war in which he should never conquer , staking all his joys against most uncertain shadowy prizes , which to win would bring no satisfaction .