nine o’clock
Her actual multiplication of distractions and suppressions , whatever it did for her , failed to prevent her living over again any chosen minute -- for she could choose them , she could fix them -- of the freshness of relation produced by her having administered to her husband the first surprise to which she had ever treated him . It had been a poor thing , but it had been all her own , and the whole passage was backwardly there , a great picture hung on the wall of her daily life , for her to make what she would of . It fell , for retrospect , into a succession of moments that were WATCHABLE still ; almost in the manner of the different things done during a scene on the stage , some scene so acted as to have left a great impression on the tenant of one of the stalls . Several of these moments stood out beyond the others , and those she could feel again most , count again like the firm pearls on a string , had belonged more particularly to the lapse of time before dinner -- dinner which had been so late , quite at nine o'clock , that evening , thanks to the final lateness of Amerigo 's own advent . These were parts of the experience -- though in fact there had been a good many of them -- between which her impression could continue sharply to discriminate . Before the subsequent passages , much later on , it was to be said , the flame of memory turned to an equalising glow , that of a lamp in some side-chapel in which incense was thick . The great moment , at any rate , for conscious repossession , was doubtless the first : the strange little timed silence which she had fully gauged , on the spot , as altogether beyond her own intention , but which -- for just how long ?