more familiar.

But it is hard, as I say, to express all this, and it is painful
as well to attempt it--painful because in the memory of vanished
hours so filled with beauty the consciousness of present loss
oppresses. Exquisite hours, enveloped in light and silence, to
have known them once is to have always a terrible standard of
enjoyment. Certain lovely mornings of May and June come back with
an ineffaceable fairness. Venice isn't smothered in flowers at
this season, in the manner of Florence and Rome; but the sea and
sky themselves seem to blossom and rustle. The gondola waits at
the wave-washed steps, and if you are wise you will take your
place beside a discriminating companion. Such a companion in
Venice should of course be of the sex that discriminates most
finely. An intelligent woman who knows her Venice seems doubly
intelligent, and it makes no woman's perceptions less keen to be
aware that she can't help looking graceful as she is borne over
the waves. The handsome Pasquale, with uplifted oar, awaits your
command, knowing, in a general way, from observation of your
habits, that your intention is to go to see a picture or two. It
perhaps doesn't immensely matter what picture you choose: the
whole affair is so charming. It is charming to wander through the
light and shade of intricate canals, with perpetual architecture
above you and perpetual fluidity beneath. It is charming to
disembark at the polished steps of a little empty campo--a
sunny shabby square with an old well in the middle, an old church
on one side and tall Venetian windows looking down. Sometimes the
windows are tenantless; sometimes a lady in a faded dressing-gown
leans vaguely on the sill. There is always an old man holding out
his hat for coppers; there are always three or four small boys