five o'clock before
They , in their turn , glanced casually at his tall figure leaning against the parapet , not knowing how their fate was trembling in the balance . His thin , sallow face , and hungry eyes gave one or two of them perhaps a feeling of interest or discomfort ; but to most he was assuredly no more than any other man or woman in the hurly-burly . That dark figure of conscious power struggling in the fetters of its own belief in power , was a piece of sculpture they had neither time nor wish to understand , having no taste for tragedy -- for witnessing the human spirit driven to the wall . It was five o'clock before Miltoun left the Bridge , and passed , like an exile , before the gates of Church and State , on his way to his uncle 's Club . He stopped to telegraph to Audrey the time he would be coming to-morrow afternoon ; and on leaving the Post-Office , noticed in the window of the adjoining shop some reproductions of old Italian masterpieces , amongst them one of Botticelli 's ` Birth of Venus . ' He had never seen that picture ; and , remembering that she had told him it was her favourite , he stopped to look at it . Averagely well versed in such matters , as became one of his caste , Miltoun had not the power of letting a work of art insidiously steal the private self from his soul , and replace it with the self of all the world ; and he examined this far-famed presentment of the heathen goddess with aloofness , even irritation .