nine at night
There were those windy days at the end of autumn , after the sprinkling-carts had been withdrawn from the boulevard ; there were the days -LRB- about three hundred and sixty-five in the year -RRB- when the smoke and cinders from the suburban trains made her house as untidy as a switch-yard ; and there was her husband 's unconquerable propensity for smoking -- a pleasure which she compelled him to take outside on the foot pavement . Here , on pleasant evenings , he would walk up and down alone , in a slow , meditative fashion -- having little to say and nobody to say it to -- until bedtime came . This came early -- from a habit early formed . The Chicago of his young married life had given him little reason for being abroad after half-past nine at night , and he appeared to find little more reason now than then . It would not , indeed , have been impossible to make him see that , in the interval , balls , concerts , spectacles , and such-like urban doings had come on with increasing number and brilliancy , and that there were now more interests to justify a man in remaining up until half-past ten , or even until eleven . But you could not have convinced him that all these opportunities were his . Yet the consciousness of festivities sometimes obtruded upon his indifference .