nearly seven
o'clock
why had she remembered the last phrase ? why had she been impelled to ask Ulick to tell her this story ? She looked at him -- he sat with his eyes on the ground absorbed in thought , but she did not think he was thinking of the legend , but of how soon he would lose her , and she shuddered in the warm summer evening as from a sudden chill . It was now nearly seven o'clock -- she would soon have to go home to dress for dinner . They were dining out , she and Lady Duckle , and she would meet once more Lady Ascott , Lady Summersdean , those people whose lives she had begun to feel had no further concern for her . The hour was inexpressibly calm and alluring ; the blue pallor of the sky and the fading of the sunset behind the tall Bayswater houses raised the soul with a tingling sense of exalted happiness and delicious melancholy ? She did not ask herself if she loved Ulick better than Owen ; she only knew that she must act as she was acting -- that the moment had not come when she would escape from herself .