Nine o'clock
The business of War goes on in its accustomed grooves , and the business of Life will soon be over for Beauvayse . Yet she has not come . And Saxham looks at his watch . Nine o'clock . He has not eaten since early morning . He is wet to the skin and stiff with long sitting . But when the savoury odours of hot horse-soup and hot bean-coffee , accompanied by the clinking of crockery and tin pannikins , announce a meal in readiness , and would-be hosts come to the curtains and anxiously beg him to take food , he merely shakes his square black head and falls again to watching the unconscious face of Beauvayse .