nine o'clock
With that miraculous power of grief to level all things , she felt that the barriers of knowledge , of race , of all the pitiful superiorities with which human beings have obscured and decorated the underlying spirit of life , had melted back into the nothingness from which they had emerged in the beginning . This feeling of oneness , which would have surprised and startled her yesterday , appeared so natural to her now , that , after the first instant of recognition , she hardly thought of it again . `` Thank you , Marthy , '' she answered gently , and closing the door , went back to her chair under the raised corner of the sheet . When the doctor came at nine o'clock she was sitting there , in the same position , so still and tense that she seemed hardly to be breathing , so ashen grey that the sheet hanging above her head showed deadly white by contrast with her face . In those three hours she knew that the clinging tendrils of personal desire had relaxed their hold forever on life and youth . `` If he does n't get worse , we 'll pull through , '' said the doctor , turning from his examination of Harry to lay his hand , which felt as heavy as lead , on her shoulder . `` We 've an even chance -- if his heart does n't go back on us . ''