midnight
In a thousand ways they learn `` how to live as other people do , '' -- in magazines and on bill boards , in the theatre , the churches , the trains , the illustrated novel . Suggestions how to live ! Meantime upstairs in the mansard room of the old house Falkner was figuring over stresses and strains of an unemotional sort . When past midnight he shoved the papers into the drawer , a familiar thought coursed through his brain : somehow he must sell himself at a dearer price . Living was not cheap even in Torso , and the cost of living was ever going higher , so the papers said and the wives . There were four of them now , a fifth to come in a few months . There should be a third servant , he knew , if they were to live `` like other people . ''