eleven o’clock
You can leave the office at any time you wish . Good-night . '' The girl shrank as if he had struck her , looked up at him with wide , wondering eyes , waited for a moment as if expecting to be recalled , then , as Mr Cheney wheeled his chair about and turned his back upon her , she suddenly sped away without a word . She left the office a few moments later ; but it was not until after eleven o'clock that she dragged herself up two flights of stairs toward her room on the attic floor at the Palace . She had been walking the streets like a mad creature all that intervening time , trying to still the agonising pain in her heart . Preston Cheney had long been her ideal of all that was noble , grand and good , she worshipped him as devout pagans worshipped their sacred idols ; and , without knowing it , she gave him the absorbing passion which an intense woman gives to her lover . It was only now that he had treated her with such rough brutality , and discharged her from his employ for so slight a cause , that the knowledge burst upon her tortured heart of all he was to her .