five o'clock
`` We 're going to drink tea and forget the war , '' she continued almost defiantly . `` I wo n't ask either of you to stay for dinner , because I 'm going out . '' Carr 's house sat on a slope that dipped down to a long narrow park , and beyond that to a beach on which slow rollers from the outside broke with a sound like the snore of a distant giant . Along that slope and away to the eastward the city was speckled with lights , although it was barely five o'clock , so early does dark close in in that latitude when the year is far spent . And when the maid trundled in a tea-wagon , that vista of twinkling specks , and the more distant flash of Point Atkinson light intermittently stabbing the murky Gulf , was shut away by drawn blinds , and the four of them sat in the cosy room eating little cakes and drinking tea and chatting lightly of things that bulked smaller than the war . Presently Sam Carr drew Tommy away to the library to look up some legal technicality over which they had fallen into dispute . Sophie lay back in her chair , eyes fixed on the red glow of the embers as if she saw through them and into vast distances beyond .