four o’clock
I leaned my arms on the table and scanned the remains of my feast by the light of my one sad candle , not thinking of what I saw , or of the various calls for help I had been dispatching , or of the sailor grimly mounting guard outside my door . I was remembering a girl , a girl with ruddy hair and a wild-rose flush and great , gray , starry eyes , a girl that by all the rules of the game I should have handed over to those who represented the countries she was duping , a girl that I had found I had to shield when I came face to face with the issue . The Turin-Paris express -- the most direct , the Italians call it -- was too popular by half to suit the taste of morose beings who wished for solitude . With great trouble and pains I had ferreted out a single vacant compartment ; but as four o'clock sounded and the whistle blew for departure , a belated traveler joined me -- worse still , an acquaintance who could not be quite ignored . The unwelcome intruder was Mr. John Van Blarcom , my late fellow-voyager , and he accepted the encounter with a better grace than I. `` Why , hello ! '' he greeted me cheerfully . `` Going through to France ?