Then Peter came in, and he and Lucy laughed the same laugh at one another, and then they had tea.  After all, Rhoda didn’t see now that they were so like.  Peter talked much more; he said twenty words to Lucy’s one; Lucy wasn’t a great talker at all.  Peter was a chatterbox; there was no denying that.  And their features and eyes and all weren’t so like, either.  But when one had said all this, there was something... something inner, essential, indefinable, of the spirit, that was not of like substance but the same.  So it is sometimes with twins.  Rhoda, her intuitive faculties oddly sharpened, took in this.  Peter might care most for Denis Urquhart; he might love Rhoda as a wife; but Lucy, less consciously loved than either, was intimately one with himself.

Peter asked “How is Denis?” and Lucy answered “Very well, of course.  And very busy playing at being a real member.  Isn’t it fun?  Oh, he sent you his love.  And you’re to come and see us soon.”

That last wasn’t a message from Denis; Peter knew that.  He knew that there would be no more such messages from Denis; the Margerisons had gone a little too far in their latest enterprise; they had strained the cord to breaking-point, and it had broken.  In future Denis might be kind and friendly to Peter when they met, but he wouldn’t bring about meetings; they would embarrass him.  But Lucy knew nothing of that.  Denis hadn’t mentioned to her what had happened at Astleys last November; he never dwelt on unpleasant subjects or made a talk about them.  So Lucy said to Peter and Rhoda, “You must come and see us soon,” and Peter said, “You’re so far away, you know,” evading her, and she gave him a sudden wide clear look, taking in all he didn’t say, which was the way they had with one another, so that no deceits could ever stand between them.

“Don’t be silly, Peter,” she told him; then, “’Course you must come”; but he only smiled at her and said, “Some day, perhaps.”

“Honey sandwiches, if you come at tea-time,” she reminded him.  “D’you like them, Rhoda?” She used the name prettily, half shyly, with one of her luminous, friendly looks.  “They’re Peter’s favourite food, you know.”

But Rhoda didn’t know; Peter had never told her; perhaps because it would be extravagant to have them, perhaps because he never put even foods into class-lists.  Only Lucy knew without being told, probably because it was her favourite food too.

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.