nine o'clock
What I wanted was to excite an honourable feeling in her ... . Her crying was a good thing , it will have a good effect . '' Yet I could not feel at ease . All that evening , even when I had come back home , even after nine o'clock , when I calculated that Liza could not possibly come , still she haunted me , and what was worse , she came back to my mind always in the same position . One moment out of all that had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination ; the moment when I struck a match and saw her pale , distorted face , with its look of torture . And what a pitiful , what an unnatural , what a distorted smile she had at that moment ! But I did not know then , that fifteen years later I should still in my imagination see Liza , always with the pitiful , distorted , inappropriate smile which was on her face at that minute .