Adele had got the cataleptic look of a figure in a stained glass window, so rapt she was. But she wanted to grasp this with full appreciation. “Lucia, don’t be so dreadfully clever,” she said. “You’re talking high over my head: you’re like the whirr of an aëroplane. Explain what you mean by symbols.” “My dear, you know,” she said. “All our runnings-about, all our gaieties are symbols of affection: we love to see each other because we partake of each other. Interesting people, distinguished people, obscure people, ordinary people, we long to bring them all into our lives in order to widen our horizons. We learn, or we try to learn of other interests besides our own. I shall have to make Riseholme understand that dear little Alf, playing the flute at my house, or half a dozen princes eating quails at Marcia’s mansion, it’s all the same, isn’t it? We get to know the point of view of prize-fighters and princes. And it seems to me, it seems to me----” 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.