ten o'clock
At six-forty-six Albert Penny came home to supper . There was nothing consciously premeditated about the astonishing speech Lilly made to her husband that evening . Yet it was as if the words had been in burning rehearsal , so scuttling hot they came off her lips . There had been a coolly quiet evening on the front porch , a telephone from Flora Bankhead , a little run-in visit from her parents , and now at ten o'clock her husband , shirt-sleeved and before the mirror , tugging to unbutton his collar . She did not want that collar off . It brought , rawly , a sense of his possession of her . She sat fully dressed , in her chair beside the window , the black irises almost crowding out the gray in her eyes , her hands tightening and tightening against that removal of collar .