Lucia’s gaze grew a shade more lost and aloof.
“It seems to me that we extend our very souls,” she said, “by letting them flow into other lives. How badly I put it! But when Eric Greatorex—so charming of him—played those delicious pieces of Stravinski to me before dinner, I felt I was stepping over some sort of frontier into Stravinski. Eric made out my passport. A multiplication of experience: I think that is what I mean.”
None of those present could have said with any precision what Lucia had meant, but the general drift seemed to be that an hour with a burglar or a cannibal was valuable for the amplification of the soul.
“Odd types too,” she said. “How good for one to be put into touch with something quite remote. Marcelle—Marcelle Periscope—you met him at my house, didn’t you, Aggie——”
“Why wasn’t I asked?” said Marcia.
Lucia gave a little quick smile, as at some sweet child’s interruption.
“Darling Marcia, why didn’t you propose yourself? Surely you know me well enough to do that. Yes, Marcelle, a cinema-artist. A fresh horizon, a fresh attitude toward life. So good for me: it helps me not to be narrow. Dio mio! how I pray I shall never be narrow. To be shocked, too! How shocking to be shocked. If you all had fifty lovers apiece, I should merely think it a privilege to know about them all.”
Marcia longed, with almost the imperativeness of a longing to sneeze, to allude directly to Stephen. She raised her eyes for a half second to Adele, the priestess of this cult in which she knew she was rapidly becoming a worshipper, but if ever an emphatic negative was wordlessly bawled at a tentative enquirer, it was bawled now. If Lucia chose to say anything about Stephen it would indeed be manna, but to ask—never! Aggie, seated sideways to them, had not seen this telegraphy, and spoke unwisely with her lips.
“If an ordinary good-looking woman,” she said, “tells me that she hasn’t got a lover or a man who wants to be her lover, I always say ‘You lie!’ So she does. You shall begin, Lucia, about your lovers.”
Nothing could have been more unfortunate. Adele could have hurled the entire six rows of the Whitby pearls at Aggie’s face. Lucia had no lover, but only the wraith of a lover, on whom direct light must never be flashed. Such a little reflection should have shown Aggie that. The effect of her carelessness was that Lucia became visibly embarrassed, looked at the clock, and got up in a violent hurry.