eight o’clock
Studious concentration was evidently a painful novelty to their features . Drops of perspiration came one by one from their matted hair , and their hands dampened the paper upon which they wrote . The windows stood open wide to the May darkness , but nothing came in save heat and insects ; for spring , being behind time , was making up with a sultry burst at the end , as a delayed train makes the last few miles high above schedule speed . Thus it has been since eight o'clock . Eleven was daintily striking now . Its diminutive sonority might have belonged to some church-bell far distant across the Cambridge silence ; but it was on a shelf in the room , -- a timepiece of Gallic design , representing Mephistopheles , who caressed the world in his lap . And as the little strokes boomed , eight -- nine -- ten -- eleven , the voice of the instructor steadily continued thus : -- `` By starting from the Absolute Intelligence , the chief cravings of the reason , after unity and spirituality , receive due satisfaction .