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136 But in spite of these clouds she was extraordinarily content. She had not asked life to give her romance, but success, and that, as far as she had gone, it lavished on her. She had, from the social points of view, that most brilliant gift of all—namely, the faculty of enjoying herself, compared to which wit and mere cleverness is but as the copper change of a new sovereign. From the first moment of her appearance in town as Edgar's fiancée, the whole world saw that she had that splendid birthright; wherever she went, whatever she did, she brought with her the splendour of her pleasure, the invigoration of her superb spirits. Even in the scarcely detached limits of Fair View, it has been seen how, when she took herself in hand and determined to make the best of her cabined circumstances, she so quickened the lives of her aunts that the one learned French and the other a new patience; and now, when every door was open to her, and everything that money and youth and health can offer were waiting her pleasure, it was little wonder that the outpouring flood of her delight was irresistible. In the first few weeks that she had spent in town a year ago, she, knowing that she was new to the game of enjoying yourself as much as you possibly can, had watched with attention and perception what people who were successful at it did and did not do—what were the rules, in fact—and it took her a very short time to perceive that there were no rules at all that she was in the least likely to transgress. A man might not wear his hair long (unless a pianist) or cheat at cards; a woman—there really was nothing she might not do, except be brought into the divorce court. Apart from these things the only road to success and popularity was to enjoy yourself. Plenty of people get on excellently by pretending to enjoy themselves; Lucia in this, at any rate, was genuine—she was in love with life.

This sketched analysis must be taken as the dissection of her consciousness of her attitude towards external things as she stood looking at the backs of the vellum edition of the Kelmscott Press; and from it, it will be seen that the last two years had altered her very little, but it seemed as if she had lived a dim, subaqueous existence until the time of her marriage, like the chrysalis of some water-breeding fly. Then the moment had come; she had floated up to the sunlit surface, had crawled out from her confining sheath, and had spread gauzy, iridescent wings to the summer air. Not that she ever floated aimlessly about; it was no brainless life that she so strenuously enjoyed,