five o'clock
This couple so stealthily enlaced , the gleam of their furtively turned eyes , the whispering of their lips , that stony niche below the twittering sparrows , so cunningly sought out -- it was the world he had abjured ! When he looked again , they -- like a vision seen -- had stolen away and gone ; the music too had ceased , there was no scent of heliotrope . In the stony niche crouched a stray cat watching the twittering sparrows . Miltoun went out , and , turning into the empty Strand , walked on -- without heeding where , till towards five o'clock he found himself on Putney Bridge . He rested there , leaning over the parapet , looking down at the grey water . The sun was just breaking through the heat haze ; early waggons were passing , and already men were coming in to work . To what end did the river wander up and down ; and a human river flow across it twice every day ?