seven o'clock
`` If you take the Garfield line and change at Ironton to the Onteora branch , it 'll bring you back on the other side of Bellevue , and Bellevue ai n't so big but what it wo n't be a very long walk to where you live . '' Lydia thanked him , touched , as she so often was , with the kind and , to her , welcome absence of impersonality in working people ; and , assuring herself that she had time enough to eat something before her car 's departure , betook herself to a dairy lunch-room where she ate a conscientiously substantial supper . The heat of the day had left her little appetite ; but to `` take care of herself '' now seemed at last one of the worth-while things to do which she had always had so eager a longing . At seven o'clock she took the trolley pointed out to her by her friend , the starter , who noticed and remembered her when she returned to the waiting-room . The evening rush was over , and for some time she was the only passenger . Then a very tired-looking , middle-aged man , an accountant perhaps , in a shabby alpaca coat , boarded the car and sank at once into a restless doze , his heat-paled face nodding about like a broken-necked doll 's . Lydia herself felt heavy on her the death-like fatigue which the last weeks had brought to her , but she was not sleepy .