four o'clock
If she held him up to it , he could laugh it off . Anything could be laughed off . So , the shadows mingling with the inconsequence of his thoughts , he drifted away to sleep , catching himself back , now and then , to luxuriate in the assurance that he was in the right place , finding comfortable assuagements , and that inexplicably , because so suddenly , everything was for the best in a mysterious but probably entirely unaccountable world . At four o'clock he woke . He had not for a moment last night expected this . Four o'clock had been for months the hour of his tryst with the powers of darkness . They hovered over him then with dull grey wings extended , from sunrise to sunset , from east to west .