six
o'clock
`` I now understand Britt 's words -- only the authority of the husband can save her from her all-surrounding foes , '' and at the moment his fist doubled with desire to claim and exercise that power . The harsh reality of the outside world was like the hard-driven , acrid spray of the ocean in a wintry storm , it stung yet calmed with its grateful , stern menace . A thin drizzle of rain was beginning to fall , and the avenues were filled with the furious clamor of belated traffic . The clangor of the overhead trains -- almost incessant at this hour -- benumbed the ear , and every side-street rang with the hideous clatter of drays and express-carts , each driver , each motor-man , laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six o'clock , while truculent pedestrians , tired , eager , and exacting , trod upon one another 's heels in their homeward haste . This tumult of turbulent , coarse , unthinking life seemed at the moment not merely normal but wholesome and admirable by force of contrast with the morbid , unnatural , and useless scenes through which he had just passed . Better to be a burly , unreflecting truckman than a troubled , unresting soul like Anthony Clarke , `` Yes , and better for Viola Lambert to be the wife of one of these rude animal types , suffering a life of physical hardship , than to continue the sport of a man who , having lost the true values out of his own life , is remorselessly distorting those of the woman he professes to love . '' His mind then went back , by the same law of contrast , to his momentous ride across the Sulphur Spring trail .