noon
The whole world expanded and vibrated before the intensity of his passion . He was to condense a possible thirty or forty years into seven days . To-day was the twenty-third of May . By to-morrow noon he could adjust all his affairs . With nothing to demand of them in the future it would be an easy matter to cut them off . On Friday , May twenty-fourth , then , he could begin . This would bring the end on the thirty-first .