Four o'clock
So , the shadows mingling with the inconsequence of his thoughts , he drifted away to sleep , catching himself back , now and then , to luxuriate in the assurance that he was in the right place , finding comfortable assuagements , and that inexplicably , because so suddenly , everything was for the best in a mysterious but probably entirely unaccountable world . At four o'clock he woke . He had not for a moment last night expected this . Four o'clock had been for months the hour of his tryst with the powers of darkness . They hovered over him then with dull grey wings extended , from sunrise to sunset , from east to west . He never had the courage to peer up at them and see how far the wings really did reach . They covered his mortal sky , and when he refused to stare up into their leaden pinions , they stooped to him and buffeted and smothered him , until he was such a mass of bruised suffering within that he could almost believe his body also was quivering into the numbness of acquiescent misery .