five o'clock
To sit in an office , to thumb through papers , to bark orders , to be a machine . Sally stood very still for an instant , startled , feeling her sanity threatened by the very absurdity of the thought . People who worked in offices could turn for escape to a cottage in the sunset 's glow , when they were set free by the moving hands of a clock . There could be a fierce joy at the thought of deliverance , at the prospect of going home at five o'clock . But for Sally was the brightness , the deliverance withheld . The corridor was wide and deserted and the black tiles with their gold borders seemed to converge upon her , hemming her into a cool magnificence as structurally somber as the architectural embellishments of a costly mausoleum . She found the office with her surface mind , working at cross-purposes with the confusion and swiftly mounting dread which made her footsteps falter , her mouth go dry .