three o'clock
Women at the opera , so fragrant that the senses swim , sit with consciousness partitioned against a sweating , shuddering woman in some forbidding , forbidden room , hacking open a wall to conceal something red-stained . One-half of the world does not know or care how the other half lives or dies . When , one summer , July came in like desert wind , West Cabanne Terrace and that part of residential St. Louis that is set back in carefully conserved , grove-like lawns did not sip its iced limeades with any the less refreshment because , down-town at the intersection of Broadway and West Street , a woman trundling a bundle of washing in an old perambulator suddenly keeled of heat , saliva running from her mouth-corners . At three o'clock , that hour when so often a summer 's day reaches its stilly climax and the heat-dance becomes a thing visible , West Cabanne Terrace and its kind slip into sheerest and crêpiest de Chine , click electric fans to third speed , draw green shades , and retire for siesta . At that same hour , in the Popular Store , where Broadway and West Street intersect , one hundred and fifty salesgirls -- jaded sentinels for a public that dares not venture down , loll at their counters and after the occasional shopper , relax deeper to limpidity . At the jewelry counter , a crystal rectangle facing broadside the main entrance and the bleached and sun-grilled street without , Miss Lola Hassiebrock , salient among many and with Olympian certainty of self , lifted two Junoesque arms like unto the handles of a vase , held them there in the kind of rigidity that accompanies a yawn , and then let them flop . `` Oh-h-h-h , God bless my soul ! ''