"I will presently," said Peter, with one 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."