eleven o’clock in the evening
But now the desert was vanished , and the oasis stretched illimitable to the horizon in front of him . That was where , for the future , his life was to be passed , not idly , sitting under trees , but in the eager pursuit of its unnumbered paths . It was that aspect of it which , as he knew so well , his father , for instance , would never be able to understand . To Lord Ashbridge 's mind , music was vaguely connected with white waistcoats and opera glasses and large pink carnations ; he was congenitally incapable of viewing it in any other light than a diversion , something that took place between nine and eleven o'clock in the evening , and in smaller quantities at church on Sunday morning . He would undoubtedly have said that Handel 's Messiah was the noblest example of music in the world , because of its subject ; music did not exist for him as a separate , definite and infinite factor of life ; and since it did not so exist for himself , he could not imagine it existing for anybody else . That Michael correctly knew to be his father 's general demeanour towards life ; he wanted everybody in their respective spheres to be like what he was in his . They must take their part , as he undoubtedly did , in the Creation-scheme when the British aristocracy came into being .