eleven o’clock
There are moments when the inner life actually `` pays , '' when years of self-scrutiny , conducted for no ulterior motive , are suddenly of practical use . Such moments are still rare in the West ; that they come at all promises a fairer future . Margaret , though unable to understand her sister , was assured against estrangement , and returned to London with a more peaceful mind . The following morning , at eleven o'clock , she presented herself at the offices of the Imperial and West African Rubber Company . She was glad to go there , for Henry had implied his business rather than described it , and the formlessness and vagueness that one associates with Africa itself had hitherto brooded over the main sources of his wealth . Not that a visit to the office cleared things up . There was just the ordinary surface scum of ledgers and polished counters and brass bars that began and stopped for no possible reason , of electric-light globes blossoming in triplets , of little rabbit-hutches faced with glass or wire , of little rabbits .