noons
Oh , how near we should be to heaven could we live daily , hourly , in the presence of one the honesty of whose word we could never doubt , the authority of whose word we could never disobey ! Mr. Vane professes not to understand music , not even to care for it , except rarely , and yet he spoke of its influence over others with an enthusiasm that half charmed me once more back to my destined calling ; nay , might have charmed me wholly , but that he seemed to think that I -- that any public singer -- must be a creature apart from the world , -- the world in which such men live . Perhaps that is true . It was one of those lovely noons towards the end of May in which a rural suburb has the mellow charm of summer to him who escapes awhile from the streets of a crowded capital . The Londoner knows its charm when he feels his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health , or , pausing at Richmond under the budding willow , gazes on the river glittering in the warmer sunlight , and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief trill of the blackbird . But the suburbs round Paris are , I think , a yet more pleasing relief from the metropolis ; they are more easily reached , and I know not why , but they seem more rural , -- perhaps because the contrast of their repose with the stir left behind , of their redundance of leaf and blossom compared with the prim efflorescence of trees in the Boulevards and Tuileries , is more striking . However that may be , when Graham reached the pretty suburb in which Isaura dwelt , it seemed to him as if all the wheels of the loud busy life were suddenly smitten still .