eight o'clock
But a large room on the ground floor of the tenement , opening towards the main street , was used during the week by one of his French refugee friends as a dancing-saloon ; and in this room on every Sunday evening the uncrowned king of the proletariate Socialists was permitted to hold his royal levees . Thither all that was best and truest in the socially rebellions classes domiciled in London used to make its way ; and there men calmly talked over the ultimate chances of social revolutions which would have made the hair of respectable Philistine Marylebone stand stiffly on end , had it only known the rank political heresies that were quietly hatching in its unconscious midst . While Max Schurz 's hall was rapidly filling with the polyglot crowd of democratic solidarists , Ernest Le Breton and his brother were waiting in the chilly little drawing-room at Epsilon Terrace , Bayswater , for the expected arrival of Harry Oswald . Ernest had promised to introduce Oswald to Max Schurz 's reception ; and it was now past eight o'clock , getting rather a late hour for those simple-minded , early-rising Communists . ` I 'm afraid , Herbert , ' said Ernest to his brother , ` he forgets that Max is a working-man who has to be at his trade again punctually by seven o'clock to-morrow . He thinks he 's going out to a regular society At Home , where ten o'clock 's considered just the beginning of the evening . Max wo n't at all like his turning up so late ; it smells of non-productivity . '