ten o'clock at night
Bianca 's eyes fastened themselves on that flush . Whether or no -- as philosophers say -- little things are all big with the past , of whose chain they are the latest links , they frequently produce what apparently are great results . The marital relations of Hilary and his wife , which till then had been those of , at all events , formal conjugality , changed from that moment . After ten o'clock at night their lives became as separate as though they lived in different houses . And this change came about without expostulations , reproach , or explanation , just by the turning of a key ; and even this was the merest symbol , employed once only , to save the ungracefulness of words . Such a hint was quite enough for a man like Hilary , whose delicacy , sense of the ridiculous , and peculiar faculty of starting back and retiring into himself , put the need of anything further out of the question . Both must have felt , too , that there was nothing that could be explained .