“But why didn’t you wear your pearls, Lucia?” asked Adele. “I was hoping to see them.” (She had heard talk of Aunt Amy’s pearls, but had not noticed them on the night of Marcia’s ball.) “My little seedlings!” said Lucia. “Just seedlings, compared to Marcia’s marbles. Little trumperies!” Aggie had seen them, and she knew Lucia did not overstate their minuteness. Like a true Luciaphil, she changed a subject that might prove embarrassing. “Take away your baubles, Marcia,” said Aggie. “They are only diseases of a common shell fish which you eat when it’s healthy and wear when it’s got a tumour.... How wretched it is to think that all of us aren’t going to meet day after day as we have been doing! There’s Adele going to America, and there’s Marcia going to Scotland--what a foul spot, Marcia, come to Marienbad instead with me. And what are you going to do, Lucia?” “Oh, my dear, how I wanted to go to Aix or Marienbad,” she said. “But my Pepino says it’s impossible. We’ve got to stop quiet at Riseholme. Shekels, tiresome shekels.” “There she goes, talking about Riseholme as if it was some dreadful penance to go there,” said Adele. “You adore Riseholme, Lucia, at least if you don’t you ought to. Olga raves about it. She says she’s never really happy away from it. When are you going to ask me there?” “Adele, as if you didn’t know that you weren’t always welcome,” said Lucia. “Me, too,” said Marcia. “A standing invitation to both of you always,” said Lucia. “Dear Marcia, how sweet of you to want to come! I go there on Tuesday, and there I remain. But it’s true, I do adore it. No balls, no parties, and such dear Arcadians. You couldn’t believe in them without seeing them. Life at its very simplest, dears.” “It can’t be simpler than Scotland,” said Marcia. “In Scotland you kill birds and fish all day, and eat them at night. That’s all.” Lucia through these months of strenuous effort had never perhaps felt herself so amply rewarded as she was at this moment. All evening she had talked in an effortless deshabille of mind to the great ones of the country, the noble, the distinguished, the accomplished, and now here she was in a duchess’s bedroom having a good-night talk. This was nearer Nirvana than even Marcia’s ball. And the three women there seemed to be grouped round her: they waited--there was no mistaking it--listening for something from her, just as Riseholme used to wait for her lead. She felt that she was truly attaining, and put her chin in her hand and looked a little upward. “I shall get tremendously put in my place when I go back to Riseholme again,” she said. “I’m sure Riseholme thinks I have been wasting my time in idle frivolities. It sees perhaps in an evening paper that I have been to Aggie’s party, or Adele’s house or Marcia’s ball, and I assure you it will be very suspicious of me. Just as if I didn’t know that all these delightful things were symbols.”