ne of his fainter smiles. "Let me
just get used to it, and I will."

She whispered, stroking his hand, "We've always had such fun, Peter, we
three. Haven't we? Let's go on having it."

"Yes," said Peter. "Let's."

He was vague still, and a little dizzy, but he could smile at her now.
After all, wasn't it splendid? Denis and Lucy--the two people he loved
best in the world; so immeasurably best that beside them everyone else
was no class at all.

He sat very still on the coal-scuttle, making a fresh discovery about
himself. He had known before that he had a selfish disposition, though he
had never thought about it particularly; but he hadn't known that it was
in him to grudge Denis anything--Denis, who was consciously more to him
than anyone else in the world. Lucy was different; she was rooted in the
very fibre of his being; it wasn't so much that he consciously loved her
as that she was his other self. Well, hadn't he long since given to
Denis, to use as he would, all the self he had?

But the wrench made him wince, and left him chilly and grown old.

"It's perfectly splendid for both of you," said Peter, himself again
at last. "And it was extraordinarily stupid of me not to see it
before.... Do you think Denis really meant I could go and see him?
I think I will."

"'Course he did. 'Course you will. Go to-morrow. But now it's going to
be just you and me and tea. And honey sandwiches--oh, Peter!" Her eyes
danced at him, because it was such a nice world. He came off the
coal-scuttle and made himself comfortable in a low chair near the
honey sandwiches.

"Will you and Denis try always to have them when I come to tea with you?
I do love them so. Have you arranged when it is to be, by the way?"

"No. Father won't want it to be for ages--he won't like it to be at all,
of course, because Denis isn't poor or miserable or revolutionary. But
Felicity has done so nicely for him in that way (Lawrence is getting into
horrid rows in Poland, you know) that I think I've a _right_ to someone
happy and clean, don't you?... And Denis wants it to be soon. So I
suppose it will be soon."

"Sure to be," Peter agreed.

The room was full of roses; their sweetness was exuberant, intoxicating;
not like Lucy, who usually had small, pale, faint flowers.

"Isn't it funny," she said, "how one thinks one can't be any happier, and
then suddenly something happens inside one, and one sees everything new.
I used to think things couldn't be