ten
o'clock
And he retraced his steps to the dining-room . `` I wish to heaven she had never discovered this uncomfortable husband of hers ! '' he reflected as he went `` Since he will neither marry her , nor leave her alone ; and it is we who have to suffer for his heroics ! '' For all that , he found speedy consolation in the thought that at ten o'clock a new ` subject ' was coming to sit to him : -- a wrinkled hag , whom he had met on his way back from Jundraghat , bent half double under a towering load of grass , her neutral-tinted tunic and draped trousers relieved by the scarlet of betel-nut on her lips and gums , and by a goat 's - hair necklet strung with raw lumps of amber and turquoise , interset with three plaques of beaten silver ; -- the only form of savings bank known to these simple children of the hills . While hastily demolishing his breakfast , Maurice visualised his picture in every detail : and with the arrival of his model all thought of Quita and her woes was crowded out of his mind . Yet the man was not heartless , by any means . He was simply an artist of the extreme type , endowed by temperament with the capacity for subordinating all things , -- his own griefs no less than the griefs of others , -- to one dominant , insatiable purpose .