noon
he answered ; and for once his banter struck her as beside the point . The Ibis carried them , during the endless June days , far and wide along the enchanted shores ; they roamed among the Euganeans , they saw Aquileia and Pomposa and Ravenna . Their hosts would gladly have taken them farther , across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the Ægean ; but Susy resisted this infraction of Nick 's rules , and he himself preferred to stick to his task . Only now he wrote in the early mornings , so that on most days they could set out before noon and steam back late to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon . His work continued to progress , and as page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy , the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter both their lives . In what sense she could not conjecture : she merely felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it , if only through a few rosy summer weeks , had already given him a new way of saying `` Yes '' and `` No . '' OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally aware .