Then came the letters which had come to Foley in the East, and been hardly regarded by him in the hurry of travel. Letters which read pleasantly for the most part, as he went through them now, with their echoes of charming Oxford life--charming for a time, though troubled afterwards. With Dr. Joseph's theology to rely on, and Dr. Joseph's approval of his life, Sutton's uneasy conscience had been at rest for a while, and he had let himself enjoy life without questioning--just the simple human joy of the world and youth, with the weather growing warmer, and the Spring blossoming in the gardens of that beautiful old city, where he was quite at home now. "I have so enjoyed the Spring," he wrote "your tardy, veering English Spring, with its gusts of snow and black weather, and yet enough warm days to woo from the earth the English flowers that till last year I only knew of in books. But I greet them as old friends now, the primroses, and cowslips, and daffodils.... May is here, the air is full of the greenness of leaves and the songs of birds, the lank rose trees are budding on the Gothic walls, and when I breathe the fragrant air and look about me I rub my eyes, and wonder whether May was ever so beautiful at home. Some beautiful days, of course, I can remember vividly; but I lived then for the most part, I think, among pale thoughts and theories, growing old before I was young, and looking so rarely out--indeed, thinking somehow that it was almost wrong to look out on the beauty and colour of the world...."