eight o'clock
-- a leaden coldness shut her spirit into a tomb . She had walked fast , after descending at Bedford Street from a fierce motor-bus with a party of comfortable people , bound for the Adelphi Theatre . Never before had she been in a motor-omnibus , and she was not sure whether the great hurtling thing would deign to stop , except at trysting-places of its own ; so it had seemed wise to bundle out rather than risk a snub from the conductor , who looked like pictures of the Duke of Wellington . But in the lighted Strand she had been stared at as well as jostled : a girl alone at eight o'clock on a winter evening , bare-headed , conspicuously tall if conspicuous in no other way ; dressed for dinner or the theatre in a pale gray , sequined gown under a mauve chiffon cloak meant for warm nights of summer . Of course , as Mrs. Ellsworth -LRB- giver of dress and wrap -RRB- often pointed out , `` beggars must n't be choosers '' ; and Annesley Grayle was worse off than a beggar , because beggars need n't keep up appearances . She should have thanked Heaven for good clothes , and so she did in chastened moods ; but it was a costume to make a girl hurry through the Strand , and just for an instant she had been glad to turn from the white glare into comparative dimness . That was because offensive eyes had made her forget the almost immediate future in the quite immediate present .