noon
I know now that she , like all women , had the plain , tough , durable human fibre under that exterior of delicacy and fragility , and that my overconsideration caused her to exaggerate to herself her own preposterous notions of her superior fineness . We walked for an hour , talking -- with less constraint and more friendliness than ever before , and when I left her I , for the first time , felt that I had left a good impression . When I entered my offices , I , from force of habit , mechanically went direct to the ticker -- and dropped all in an instant from the pinnacle of Heaven into a boiling inferno . For the ticker was just spelling out these words : `` Mowbray Langdon , president of the Textile Association , sailed unexpectedly on the _ Kaiser Wilhelm _ at noon . A two per cent . raise of the dividend rate of Textile Common , from the present four per cent , to six , has been determined upon . '' And I had staked up to , perhaps beyond , my limit of safety that Textile would fall !