four o'clock
`` If you were any one else , '' he remarked , `` I 'd almost think you were thinking ! '' Laurie disclaimed the charge , but his abstraction did not lift . By this time his imagination was hard at work . He pictured the girl in the mirror as stretched on her virginal cot in the final exhaustion of starvation ; and the successful effort to keep away from the studio building till four o'clock called for all his will power . Suppose the boy blundered , or was n't in time . Suppose the girl really had not eaten anything since last Tuesday ! These thoughts , and similar ones , obsessed him .