noon
CHAPTER I . The Romance that Might have Been With July there came a long rain , and in the burst of sunshine which followed it the young tobacco shot up fine and straight and tall , clothing the landscape in a rich , tropical green . > From morning till night the men worked now in the great fields , removing the numerous `` suckers '' from the growing plants , and pinching off the slender tops to prevent the first beginnings of a flower , except where , at long spaces , a huge pink cluster would be allowed to blossom and come to seed . Christopher , toiling all day alone in his own field , felt the clear summer dawn break over him , the golden noon gather to full heat , and the coming night envelop him like a purple mist . Living , as he did , so close to the earth , himself akin to the strong forces of the soil , he had grown gradually from his childhood into a rare physical expression of the large freedom of natural things . It was an unusually hot day in mid-August -- the time of the harvest moon and of the dreaded tobacco fly -- that he came home at the dinner hour to find Cynthia standing , spent and pale , beside the well . `` The sun is awful , Christopher ; I do n't see how you bear it but it makes your hair the colour of ripe wheat . ''