eight o’clock
The next morning came , and with it came Hope , as it usually came to him in the morning , and he kissed her with passionate fervour as he went out , rejoicing to think that , although she was so feeble , she was recovering ; that he could once more look forward as in earlier days , to the evening , and forgetting every cloud which had ever come between them . Alas , when the night of that very day came he found his little store exhausted , and he and the companion of his life sat together for a quarter of an hour or more without speaking a word . He proposed reading a book , and took up the Ferguson , thinking he could extract from it something which might interest her ; but she was so irresponsive , and evidently cared so little for it , that he ceased . It was but eight o'clock , and how to fill up the time he did not know . At last he said he would just take a turn outside and look at the weather . He went out and stood under the stars of which he had been reading . The meeting , after such a separation , was scarcely twenty-four hours old , and yet he felt once more the old weariness and the old inability to profit by her society or care for it .