half past five
Then , after a silence , with a gasp , `` I 'm not mad . But I think I shall be if you go on looking at me like that . Wo n't you please go ? '' Graham Stannard made his well-meant but disastrous proposal to Mary at half past five or so on a Friday afternoon . It was a little more than twenty-four hours later , just after dark on Saturday evening , that she came in , unheralded , more incredibly like a vision than ever , upon Anthony March in his secret lair above the grocery . He was sitting at his work-table scoring a passage in the third act of _ The Dumb Princess _ for the wood-wind choir when her knock , faint as it was , breaking in upon the rhythm of his theme , caused his pen to leap away from the paper and his heart to skip a beat . But had it actually been a knock upon his door ?