eleven o'clock
I lit my pipe and sat for twenty minutes reading a weekly paper . Then I got up and looked at the family portraits . The moon coming through the lattice invited me out-of-doors as a cure for my anxiety . It was after eleven o'clock , and I was still without any knowledge of my next step . It is a maddening business to be screwed up for an unpleasant job and to have the wheels of the confounded thing tarry . Outside the house beyond a flagged terrace the lawn fell away , white in the moonshine , to the edge of the stream , which here had expanded into a miniature lake . By the water 's edge was a little formal garden with grey stone parapets which now gleamed like dusky marble .