eleven o’clock
Bartine resumed : `` I have a singular feeling toward this watch -- a kind of affection for it ; I like to have it about me , though partly from its weight , and partly for a reason I shall now explain , I seldom carry it . The reason is this : Every evening when I have it with me I feel an unaccountable desire to open and consult it , even if I can think of no reason for wishing to know the time . But if I yield to it , the moment my eyes rest upon the dial I am filled with a mysterious apprehension -- a sense of imminent calamity . And this is the more insupportable the nearer it is to eleven o'clock -- by this watch , no matter what the actual hour may be . After the hands have registered eleven the desire to look is gone ; I am entirely indifferent . Then I can consult the thing as often as I like , with no more emotion than you feel in looking at your own . Naturally I have trained myself not to look at that watch in the evening before eleven ; nothing could induce me .