noon
But the poetic impulse having again waxed strong , she was possessed by an inner flame which left her hardly conscious of what was proceeding around her . She had read till she knew by heart Trewe 's last little volume of verses , and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival some of them , till , in her failure , she burst into tears . The personal element in the magnetic attraction exercised by this circumambient , unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger than the intellectual and abstract that she could not understand it . To be sure , she was surrounded noon and night by his customary environment , which literally whispered of him to her at every moment ; but he was a man she had never seen , and that all that moved her was the instinct to specialize a waiting emotion on the first fit thing that came to hand did not , of course , suggest itself to Ella . In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions which civilization has devised for its fruition , her husband 's love for her had not survived , except in the form of fitful friendship , any more than , or even so much as , her own for him ; and , being a woman of very living ardours , that required sustenance of some sort , they were beginning to feed on this chancing material , which was , indeed , of a quality far better than chance usually offers . One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet , whence , in their excitement , they pulled out some clothing . Mrs. Hooper explained that it belonged to Mr. Trewe , and hung it up in the closet again .