two o'clock in the afternoon
`` On business . '' What more was there to be asked after that ? I accompanied him until , as we drew level with the Hotel des Quatre Saisons , he suddenly nodded to me and disappeared . For myself , I returned home , and came to the conclusion that , even had I met him at two o'clock in the afternoon , I should have learnt no more from him than I had done at five o'clock , for the reason that I had no definite question to ask . It was bound to have been so . For me to formulate the query which I really wished to put was a simple impossibility . Polina spent the whole of that day either in walking about the park with the nurse and children or in sitting in her own room .