noon
If all this could be cleared -- '' `` It never can be . '' The baffled sense of impotence against the granite wall of some immovable calamity which she had felt before came on her . She had been always used to be obeyed , followed , and caressed ; to see obstacles crumble , difficulties disappear , before her wish ; she had not been tried by any sorrow , save when , a mere child still , she felt the pain of her father 's death ; she had been lapped in softest luxury , crowned with easiest victory . The sense that here there was a tragedy whose meaning she could not reach , that there was here a fate that she could not change or soften , brought a strange , unfamiliar feeling of weakness before a hopeless and cruel doom that was no more to be altered by her will than the huge , bare rocks of Africa , out yonder in the glare of noon , were to be lifted by her hand . For she knew that this man , who made so light of perils that would have chilled many to the soul in terror , and who bore so quiet and serene a habit beneath the sharpest stings and hardest blows of his adversities , would not speak thus without full warrant ; would not consign himself to this renunciation of every hope , unless he were compelled to it by a destiny from which there was no escape . She was silent some moments , her eyes resting on him with that grave and luminous regard which no man had ever changed to one more tender or less calmly contemplative . He had risen again , and paced to and fro the narrow chamber ; his head bent down , his chest rising and falling with the labored , quickened breath .