three o'clock
Yet any acceptance was , for the present , impossible . He wanted time and the absence of ulterior pressure . He wanted to keep the tree without ornaments , realize fully the direction and momentum of this new start . ***** The afternoon waned from the purging good of three o'clock to the golden beauty of four . Afterward he walked through the dull ache of a setting sun when even the clouds seemed bleeding and at twilight he came to a graveyard . There was a dusky , dreamy smell of flowers and the ghost of a new moon in the sky and shadows everywhere . On an impulse he considered trying to open the door of a rusty iron vault built into the side of a hill ; a vault washed clean and covered with late-blooming , weepy watery-blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes , sticky to the touch with a sickening odor .