Summer Afternoons..

One perfect afternoon we spent at Bodiam–my first visit there. It was still the old spell-bound ruin, unrestored, guarded by great trees, and by a network of lanes which baffled the invading charabancs. Tranquil white clouds hung above it in a windless sky, and the silence and solitude were complete as we sat looking across at the crumbling towers, and at their reflection in a moat starred with water-lilies, and danced over by great blue dragon-flies. For a long time no one spoke; then James turned to me and said solemnly: “Summer afternoon–summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934)