noon
A silver bodkin for running ribbon through lingerie . And from the booking department , a silk umbrella suitably engraved . She cried a little . By noon the top of her desk was bare and the drawers empty . She sat looking out over the waves of roofs of a city that had beaten her back at every turn , lashed her , and yet with the mysterious counterflow of oceans had carried her out a foot for every ten it flung her back . She felt full of sobs , but quiet . Strangely quiet , as if the champing machinery of her life had stopped suddenly , leaving an hiatus that made her heart ache of passivity .