With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the orthodoxy he had worn in the ’sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before three things alone⁠—beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property; and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide interests, and, indeed could still read the

Times , but he was liable at any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct, property⁠—somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of Orfeo