Looking round at the sound of feet on the path, she saw them, and smiled a little, not as if surprised, nor as if she had to change the direction of her thought, but taking them into her vision of the spring woods as if they were natural dwellers in it.

Peter stood still on the path and looked up at her and smiled too.  He said, “Oh, Lucy, Thomas and I have come.”

She bent down towards them, and reached out her hands, dropping the primroses, for Thomas.  Peter gave her Thomas, and she laid him on her lap, cradled on her two arms, and smiled, still silently.

Peter sat down on the sloping ground just below her, his back against another tree.

“We’ve come to see you and Denis.  You won’t come to see us, so we had to take it into our own hands.  We decided, Thomas and I, two days ago, that we weren’t going on any longer in this absurd way.  We’re going to have a good time.  So we went out and got things—­lots of lovely things.  And I’ve chucked my horrible work.  And we’ve come to see you.  Will Denis mind?  I can’t help it if he does; we’ve got to do it.”

Lucy nodded, understanding.  “I know.  In thinking about you lately, I’ve known it was coming to this, rather soon.  I didn’t quite know when.  But I knew you must have a good time.”

After a little while she went on, and her clear voice fell strange and tranquil on the soft wood silence: 

“What I didn’t quite know was whether you would come and take it—­the good time—­or whether I should have to come and bring it to you.  I was going to have come, you know.  I had quite settled that.  It’s taken me a long time to know that I must:  but I do know it now.”

“You didn’t come,” said Peter suddenly, and his hands clenched sharply over the ivy trails and tore them out of the earth, and his face whitened to the lips.  “All this time ... you didn’t come ... you kept away....”  The memory of that black emptiness shook him.  He hadn’t realised till it was nearly over quite how bad it had been, that emptiness.

The two pale faces, so like, were quivering with the same pain, the same keen recognition of it.

“No,” Lucy whispered.  “I didn’t come ...  I kept away.”

Peter said, steadying his voice, “But now you will.  Now I may come to you.  Oh, I know why you kept away.  You thought it would be less hard for me if I didn’t see you.  But don’t again.  It isn’t less hard.  It’s—­it’s impossible.  First Denis, then you.  I can’t bear it.  I only want to see you sometimes; just to feel you’re there.  I won’t be grasping, Lucy.”

“Yes,” said Lucy calmly, “you will.  You’re going to be grasping in future.  You’re going to take and have....  Peter, my dear, haven’t you reached the place I’ve reached yet?  Don’t you know that between you and me it’s got to be all or nothing?  I’ve learnt that now.  So I tried nothing.  But that won’t do.  So now it’s going to be all....  I’m coming to Thomas and you.  We three together will find nice things for one another.”