ten o'clock
At the point where they might have gone wrong the explanations were renewed with a thoughtfulness which showed that their anxieties had not been forgotten . She said she could not see how any people could be both so selfish and so sweet , and her husband seized the advantage of saying something offensive : `` You women are so pampered in America that you are astonished when you are treated in Europe like the mere human beings you are . '' She answered with unexpected reasonableness : `` Yes , there 's something in that ; but when the Germans have taught us how despicable we are as women , why do they treat us so well as human beings ? '' This was at ten o'clock , after she had ridden backward a long way , and at last , within an hour of Leipsic , had got a seat confronting him . The darkness had now hidden the landscape , but the impression of its few simple elements lingered pleasantly in their sense : long levels , densely wooded with the precise , severely disciplined German forests , and checkered with fields of grain and grass , soaking under the thin rain that from time to time varied the thin sunshine . The villages and peasants ' cottages were notably few ; but there was here and there a classic or a gothic villa , which , at one point , an English-speaking young lady turned from her Tauchnitz novel to explain as the seat of some country gentleman ; the land was in large holdings , and this accounted for the sparsity of villages and cottages . She then said that she was a German teacher of English , in Hamburg , and was going home to Potsdam for a visit .