eight o'clock
After she had walked with Muriel to the door , Gloria came back into the room , turned out the lamp , and leaning her elbows on the window sill looked out at Palisades Park , where the brilliant revolving circle of the Ferris wheel was like a trembling mirror catching the yellow reflection of the moon . The street was quiet now ; the children had gone in -- over the way she could see a family at dinner . Pointlessly , ridiculously , they rose and walked about the table ; seen thus , all that they did appeared incongruous -- it was as though they were being jiggled carelessly and to no purpose by invisible overhead wires . She looked at her watch -- it was eight o'clock . She had been pleased for a part of the day -- the early afternoon -- in walking along that Broadway of Harlem , One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street , with her nostrils alert to many odors , and her mind excited by the extraordinary beauty of some Italian children . It affected her curiously -- as Fifth Avenue had affected her once , in the days when , with the placid confidence of beauty , she had known that it was all hers , every shop and all it held , every adult toy glittering in a window , all hers for the asking . Here on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street there were Salvation Army bands and spectrum-shawled old ladies on door-steps and sugary , sticky candy in the grimy hands of shiny-haired children -- and the late sun striking down on the sides of the tall tenements .