Choose the option that is the most appropriate conversion of the following sentence into Direct Speech. He said that by the time she arrived, the guests had already started leaving.
He said, "By the time she arrived, the guests had already started leaving."
The task is to change the reported (indirect) sentence He said that by the time she arrived, the guests had already started leaving into direct speech.
When we move from indirect to direct speech, the reporting verb stays (He said), a comma and opening quotation mark are added, and the exact words of the speaker are placed inside the quotation marks.
In direct speech the words are reproduced as they were originally spoken, so the reporter's back-shifting of tense is undone only where the original wording is being restored, while the meaning must remain identical.
The reported clause already contains a past simple (arrived) and a past perfect (had already started), which correctly show that the guests' leaving happened before her arrival; this sequence must be preserved word for word.
Option 3 keeps this exact structure: "By the time she arrived, the guests had already started leaving." with correct punctuation and tense, so it is the accurate direct-speech form.
Option 1 wrongly changes the tenses to 'has arrived' and 'were already leaving', altering the time relationship. Option 2 turns 'arrived' into 'had arrived', which is not required. Option 4 changes 'leaving' to 'to leave', altering the original wording.
Therefore the most appropriate conversion is He said, "By the time she arrived, the guests had already started leaving."
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