midnight
But everybody 's doing their best . ' And she had grasped Nelly 's cold hands in hers , long and pityingly . Her own fine aquiline face seemed to have grown thinner and more strained even since Nelly had known it . She often worked in the office , she said , up to midnight . All these recollections and passing visualisations of words and faces , drawn from those busy rooms a few streets off , in which not only George Sarratt 's fate , but her own , as it often seemed to Nelly , were being slowly and inexorably decided , passed endlessly through her brain , as she mechanically took off her things , and brushed her hair . Presently she was following Bridget across the hall to the drawing-room . Bridget seemed already to know all about the flat .