twenty minutes past four
Prudence , frugality , was no longer a factor in his affairs . His present personal liberty , more complete than it had ever been before -- than , he added lightly , it might ever be again -- was astonishingly soothing . Sitting comfortably in a room in his customary hotel , there was n't a pressure that could be brought to bear on him . It was now twenty minutes past four , he was to go to Savina at a quarter to six , and until then there was nothing , nothing , to force him this way or that : no directors ' meetings , gabbling East-lake figures , responsibility , housewife or children . He had n't realized the extent to which he had been surrounded and confined , the imponderable mass of what he had not only been indifferent to but actually disliked . He could lie down -- he had been up the entire past night -- and be called in an hour ; he could sit as he was , in an unbuttoned waistcoat with his legs comfortably spread out ; he could motor or walk on Fifth Avenue ; smoke ; drink -- all in an inviolable security of being . Or , going back to that moment when he had , so mistakenly , turned aside from visionary promptings to a solid comfortable career , he might -- what was it ?