When Lucy went, it was as if a ray of early spring sunshine had stolen into the room and gone. A luminous person: that was the thing Rhoda felt her to be; a study in clear pale lights; one would not have been surprised if she had crept in on a wind from a strange fairy world with her arms full of cold wet primroses, and danced out, taking with her the souls of those who dwelt within. Rhoda wasn't jealous now, if she had ever had a touch of that.
Neither Peter nor Rhoda went to the Urquharts' house, which was a long way off. But Lucy came again, many times, to Greville Street, through that spring and summer, stroking the cat's fur backwards, laughing at Peter, shyly friendly to Rhoda.
And then for a time her laughter was sad and her eyes wistful, because her father died. She said once, "I feel so stranded now, Peter; cut off from what was my life; from what really is my life, you know. Father and Felicity and I were so disreputable always, and as long as I had father I could be disreputable too, whenever I felt I couldn't bear being prosperous. I had only to go inside the house and there I was—you know, Peter?—it was all round me, and I was part of it.... Now I'm cut off from all that sort of thing. Denis and I are so well off, d'you know. Everything goes right. Denis's friends are all so happy and successful and beautifully dressed. I like them to be, of course; they are joys, like the sun shining; only..."
"The poor are always with you," suggested Peter. "You can always come to Greville Street, if you can't find them nearer at hand. And when you come we'll take Algernon's blue neck-ribbon off, that none of us may appear beautifully dressed."
"But I like Algernon's blue bow," Lucy protested. "I love people to be bright and beautiful.... That's why I like Denis so much, you know. Only I'm not sure I properly belong, that's all."
Obviously the remedy was to come to Greville Street. Lucy came more and more as the months went by.
Rhoda said once, "Doesn't it bother you to come all this way, into these ugly streets?" and she shook her head.
"Oh, I like it. I like these streets better than the ones round us. And I like your house better than ours too; it's smaller."
Rhoda could have thought she looked wistful, this fortunate person who was in love with her splendid husband and lived in the dwellings of the prosperous.
"Don't you like large houses?" she asked, without much caring; for she was absorbed in her own thoughts in these days.