about five o'clock
Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during Eustacia 's lifetime had gone into the grave with her . His passion for her had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough on hand for another fire of that sort , as may happen with more boyish loves . Even supposing him capable of loving again , that love would be a plant of slow and laboured growth , and in the end only small and sickly , like an autumn-hatched bird . He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic brass band arrived and struck up , which it did about five o'clock , with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house , he withdrew from his rooms by the back door , went down the garden , through the gate in the hedge , and away out of sight . He could not bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today , though he had tried hard . Nothing was seen of him for four hours . When he came back by the same path it was dusk , and the dews were coating every green thing .