midnight
His old friends , whom he asked over to spend the evening at his house , always had good excuses , which they gave him later over the telephone , and their wives , who used to call him by his first name , scarcely recognised him on the street . He quit coming to our office with pieces for the paper telling the town his views on this or that local matter ; and gradually gave up the fight for his old place on the school board . The clerks in the Markley Mortgage Company office say that he fell into a moody way , and would come to the office and refuse to speak to anyone for hours . Also , as the big house often glowed until midnight for a dance of the socially impossible who used the Markley ballroom , rent free , as a convenience , John Markley grew to have a sleepy look by day , and lines came into his red , shaved face . He grew anxious about his health , and a hundred worries tightened his belt and shook his great fat hand , just the least in the world , and when through some gossip that his wife brought him from the kitchen he felt the scorn of an old friend burn his soul like a caustic , for many days he would brood over it . Finally care began to chisel down his flinty face , to cut the fat from his bull neck , so that the cords stood out , and , through staring in impotent rage and pain at the ceiling in the darkness of the night , red rims began to worm around his eyes . He was not sixty years old then , and he had lashed himself into seventy .