eleven o’clock
He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes , having his impression that it would be vain to go early , and having also , more than once in the course of the day , made enquiries of the concierge . Chad had n't come in and had left no intimation ; he had affairs , apparently , at this juncture -- as it occurred to Strether he so well might have -- that kept him long abroad . Our friend asked once for him at the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli , but the only contribution offered there was the fact that every one was out . It was with the idea that he would have to come home to sleep that Strether went up to his rooms , from which however he was still absent , though , from the balcony , a few moments later , his visitor heard eleven o'clock strike . Chad 's servant had by this time answered for his reappearance ; he _ had _ , the visitor learned , come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish again . Strether spent an hour in waiting for him -- an hour full of strange suggestions , persuasions , recognitions ; one of those that he was to recall , at the end of his adventure , as the particular handful that most had counted . The mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his disposal by Baptiste , subtlest of servants ; the novel half-uncut , the novel lemon-coloured and tender , with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a contadina 's hair , had been pushed within the soft circle -- a circle which , for some reason , affected Strether as softer still after the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a further need of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed .