spoke of the intellectual movement going on in Tooting. There were musicians there—pure and simple musicians—who on Friday, after a cold-beef dinner (with excellent wine), listened to Bach, while the moon was reflected in the lake. There were others who liked—well, they liked the French plays. All who could possibly help Lucia at that period were catered for; she fed them all, she entertained them all, she provided congenial pursuits for them. It was the planting of her garden, the sowing of seed with lavish hand. Later, no doubt, she would lead, would choose her line, for it appeared to her that of all the various types of fool that the world supplied there was none so abject as that which continued to be of the menagerie order. If you liked tigers, have tigers; if you liked parrots, have parrots. But why anybody who had "arrived" kept a menagerie, she, with her cool, clever brain, could not imagine. The point of the world was to pick out from it what you wished to do, and to do it only; to see those about whom you wished to see. But you had to see them all first.
To-day, after her ride with Charlie, she knew that she would be called upon to go gardening in herself, for she was to lunch all alone with Lady Heron, and this all-alone lunch was the upshot of several interrupted conversations, several beckoning glances, that had passed between them. In spite of the brilliant success of the Brayton week, Lucia knew quite well that there was something that sat between her and above that kind of success. In that week she had made her definite mark: she had "pied-pipered" London down to the country, but—but she knew she had "pied-pipered" it. What she really wanted was to do that without effort, because it was natural to her to ask her friends, and because it was natural in her friends to come. But that week had been an effort; she had had to think, to plan. She wanted to get where no planning was necessary, to issue her inclinations to the world, and have them gratified; to admit the world into her own private manner of passing her time. In this week at Brayton she had studied the world's inclinations and gratified them; between that and the more regal style, as she already dimly guessed, there was a world of difference. Three-quarters or more of the busy climbers in London would have been ecstatically satisfied with what she had already achieved; she had the brains to use this success only as a fresh spring-board to higher branches. Others never thought of doing more than they had already done; only last Sunday, indeed, Lucia had gone down
