the hour of
four
If I see you no more here , yet in Paradise I will see you , and there also it will be joy , for it is the love that is all of life , and all of eternity , and lives -- lives ! '' Again he held her to his heart in a long embrace , and , when at last he walked down the trail into the desert , he still felt her tears on his cheek , her kisses on his lips , and her heart against his own . BOOK THREE On a warm day in May , a day which opens the crab-apple blossoms and sets the bees humming , and the children longing for a chance to pull off shoes and stockings and go wading in the brook ; on such a day the door of the little schoolhouse stood open and the sunlight lay in a long patch across the floor toward the `` teacher 's desk , '' and the breeze came in and tossed a stray curl about her forehead , and the children turned their heads often to look at the round clock on the wall , watching for the slowly moving hands to point to the hour of four . It was a mixed school . Children of all ages were there , from naughty little Johnnie Cole of five to Mary Burt and Hilton Le Moyne of seventeen and nineteen , who were in algebra and the sixth reader . It was well known by the rest of the children why Hilton Le Moyne lingered in the school this year all through May and June , instead of leaving in April , as usual , to help his uncle on the farm .