town, instead of flying up and down, and they found it pleasant after the three months in the country. Then the movement was really started. Houses reopened; people came at first to spend the week-end in London, just as in the summer they spent the week-end in the country. Then the week-end in town lengthened itself; then it became clear that with all this leaf on the trees it would be time enough to begin pheasant-shooting in December, and by the middle of November there were at least fifty of the people who mattered, who were friends, who had come to stop in London for the present. And last night Lucia had given a dance to inaugurate the new movement. Royalty had been there, quite big royalty. It was, as Lady Heron said, just like June. It certainly was an astounding achievement. And the personality of Lucia, who had always interested her, was absorbing to her now. As a rule, she did not like women; she was not even sure that she liked Lucia, but she loved the quality that made for success and domination. Certainly, at any rate, she was more interesting than the play.
"And where will you climb to next?" she asked. "I think of you always as some wonderful figure going up and up. And you never seem to stop, whereas all the rest of us climb to a certain level, and then go on doing the same things again and again. You filled a south-country house in August; you fill London in November. What next?"
Lucia cast a sudden flashlight of memory back over the time, so short a while ago, when she had envied Madge Heron, had resolved to study her. And already it was with the same sort of incredulous wonder with which she looked back on the dreary blank years at Brixham, that she thought of herself as having ever had anything to learn from dear Madge. She had, as a matter of fact, learned very much, but what she had learned she had assimilated so completely that it formed an indivisible part of herself, and could no more be traced to its origin than can a muscle of the human frame be traced back into beef or mutton that once, in the form of oxen and sheep, grazed in a field. But she was not sure that she had not more to learn yet, although what she had already learned was no longer capable of being thought back to its origin. And by coincidence, perhaps, or more likely from intuition on the part of the elder woman, Madge instantly spoke of what Lucia was thinking of.
"You have suddenly grown up, too," she said. "You used to do your feats in a sort of childish unconsciousness. I believe
