nearly eight o'clock
Her old longing for Toby had come back with extraordinary strength . As the darkness grew she slipped out of the hotel and into the night-sheltered streets . For long she walked rapidly about London , examining each clock she passed until the vagaries of them all so heightened her passion that she could have shrieked at their fresh discrepancies . And at last it was nearly eight o'clock , and she walked round and round the Marble Arch in the tortured light of the ballooned lamps , and round the outer side of the wide road thereabouts . There was as yet no sign of Toby . It wanted two or three minutes to the hour . A rush of traffic made Oxford Street roar as if with fury .