about five o'clock
He read it twice over with an incredulous air , and put it into the fire . He wrote a short but grateful refusal , saying truly that he was very seedy , and not pleasant company for any one at present . Not long after , he was alone , as usual , in his dingy ground-floor sitting-room . It was about five o'clock ; but he had not lit his lamp yet , and he had let his fire go out , though it was cold and rainy . A gas-lamp from the street shone through the dripping window-panes , bringing a dreary twilight into the room , making it one with the melancholy of the rain-swept streets . He sat by the table , with his head in his hands , a prey to the appalling depression which was his mood when sober . For the last three months he had had a curious double consciousness : of himself as an actor in a phantom world , lost in some night of dreams , where the same thoughts -- always , the same thoughts -- thoughts that were sins -- came to him in sickening recurrence ; the horror of it being that the act followed instantaneously on the thought : of himself as a spectator , separate from that other self , yet bound to it ; looking on at all it did , ashamed and loathing , yet powerless to interfere .