one o'clock
Paul wrote his letter of resignation and carried it to the dinner-table one night , hoping to read it later to her , and win her approval of its finely rounded sentences . But a heavy mail came down the trail that evening , brought by the obliging doctor from Emville , who had been summoned to dress the wounds of one of the line-men who had got too close to the murderous `` sixty thousand '' and had been badly burned by `` the juice . '' And after the letters were read , and the good doctor had made his patient comfortable , he proved an excellent fourth hand at the game of bridge for which they were always hungering . So at one o'clock Paul went upstairs with his letter still unapproved . He hesitated in the dim upper hallway , wondering if Patricia , who had left the men to beer and crackers half an hour earlier , had retired , or was , by happy chance , still gossiping with Mrs. Tolley or Min . While he loitered in the hall , the door of her room swung slowly open . Paul had often been in this room , which was merely a kind of adjunct to the sleeping-porch beyond .