eight o'clock
`` Has she submitted like Arthur to chance , to the way things happen when one no longer resists ? Is she really contented merely to knit , or is she knitting as a condemned prisoner might knit while he is waiting for the scaffold ? '' And while she watched the patient fingers , she added : `` One must either conquer or be conquered , and I will never be conquered . '' It was eight o'clock when she reached New York , and as she drove the short distance to West Twenty-third Street she began to wonder when she should see O'Hara , and what she should say to him . In the end she decided that she would wait for a chance meeting , that she would let it happen when it would without moving a step or lifting a hand . Before many days they would be obliged to meet in the yard or the hall , and some obscure , consecrated tradition of sex , some secret strain of her mother 's ineradicable feminine instinct , opposed the direct and sensible way . `` As soon as I meet him -- and in the end I shall surely meet him -- everything will be right , '' she thought , with her eyes on the streets where the spring multitude of children were swarming .