noon
`` Splendid , together with Fanny 's pearl , '' he replied placidly ; `` I was afraid they had been a legacy from your mother . I much prefer them to have been William 's -- it will give them such a Utopian sparkle . '' When Savina had gone , in a long brightly-painted car summoned from the line backed at the plaza 's edge , Lee Randon returned to their room . The heat of the day , approaching noon , the ceaseless noise of Havana rose diffused to the balcony where he sat until the circling sunlight forced him to move inside . What amazing comfort ! A curiously impersonal admiration for Savina grew with the understanding of her exceptionally perceptive being . She was what , above all else , he would have chosen for a companion : her extraordinary feeling was sheathed , tempered , in the satin of a faultless aesthetic sense ; the delicacy of her body was resembled by the fineness of her feminine mind ; she was entirely , deliciously , decorative .