Peter’s forehead was on his drawn-up knees.  He felt her hand touch his head, and shivered a little.

“Denis,” he whispered.

She answered, “Denis has everything.  Denis won’t miss me among so much.  Denis is the luckiest, the most prosperous, the most succeeding person I know.  Peter, let me try and tell you about Denis and me.”

She paused for a moment, leaning her head back against the beech-tree and looking up wide-eyed at the singing roof overhead.

“You know how it was, I expect,” she said, with the confidence they always had in each other’s knowledge, that saved so many words.  “How Denis came among us, among you and me and father and Felicity and our unprosperous, dingy friends, and how he was all bright and shining and beautiful, and I loved him, partly because he was so bright and beautiful, and a great deal because you did, and you and I have always loved the same things.  And so I married him; and at the time, and oh, for ever so long, I didn’t understand how it was; how it was all wrong, and how he and I didn’t really belong to each other a bit, because he’s in one lot of people, and I’m in another.  He’s in the top lot, that gets things, and I’m in the under lot, with you and father and all the poorer people who don’t get things, and have to find life nice in spite of it.  I’d deserted really; and father and Felicity knew I had; only I didn’t know, or I’d never have done it.  I only got to understand gradjully” (Lucy’s long words were apt to be a blur, like a child’s), “when I saw what a lot of good things Denis and his friends had, and how I had to have them too, ’cause I couldn’t get away from them; and oh, Peter, I’ve felt smothered beneath them!  They’re so heavy and so rich, and shut people out from the rest of the world that hasn’t got them, so that they can’t hear or see each other.  It’s like living in a palace in the middle of dreadful slums, and never caring.  Because you can’t care, however much you try, in the palace, the same as you can if you’re down in the middle of the poorness and the emptiness.  Wasn’t it Christ who said how hardly rich men shall enter into the kingdom of heaven?  And it’s harder still for them to enter into the other kingdoms, which aren’t heaven at all.  It’s hard for them to step out from where they are and enter anywhere else.  Peter, can anyone ever leave their world and go into another.  I have failed, you see.  Denis would never even begin to try; he wouldn’t see any object.  I don’t believe it can be done.  Except perhaps by very great people.  And we’re not that.  People like you and me and Denis belong where we’re born and brought up.  Even for the ones who try, to change, it’s hard.  And most of us don’t try at all, or care ...  Denis hardly cares, really.  He’s generous with money; he lets me give away as much as I like; but he doesn’t care himself.  Unhappiness and bad luck and disgrace don’t touch him; he doesn’t want to have anything to