Three days later it was Easter Day. In the evening, about half-past nine, when Thomas lay sleeping and Peter was packing the rugs and cushions and pictures he hadn't paid for into brown paper parcels (a tedious job), Rodney came in. Peter hadn't seen him for some time.  
"What on earth," said Rodney, lighting¹ his pipe and sitting down, "are you doing with all that upholstery? Has someone been sending you Easter presents? Well, I'm glad you're getting rid of them as speedily as may be."
 
Peter said ruefully, because he was tired of the business, "The stupid things aren't paid for. So I'm packing them up to be sent back directly the shops open again. I can't afford them, you see. Already most of my belongings² are in pawn³."
 
"I see." Rodney wasn't specially⁴ struck by this; it was the chronic⁵ condition of many of his friends, who were largely of the class who pawn their clothes on Monday and redeem⁷ them on Saturday to wear for Sunday, and pawn them again, paying, if they can afford it, a penny extra to have the dresses hung up so that they don't crush.
 
"A sudden attack of honesty," Rodney commented. "Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want to cumber⁸ yourself with all those cushions and rugs for. You're quite comfortable enough without them."
 
Peter said, "Thomas and I wanted nice things to look at. We were tired of horse-hair and 'Grace Sufficient'. Thomas is fastidious."
 
Rodney put a large finger on Thomas' head.
 
"Thomas isn't such a fool.... Hullo, there's another of you." Francesco woke and came out of his corner and laid his nose on Rodney's knee with his confiding⁹ grin.
 
"Yes, that's San Francesco. Rather nice, isn't he. He's coming with us too. I called him Francesco instead of Francis that he might feel at home in Italy."
 
"Oh, in Italy."
 
Peter hadn't meant to tell Rodney that, because he didn't think that Rodney would approve, and he wanted to avoid an argument. But he had let it out, of course; he could never keep anything in.
 
"That's where we're going to-morrow, to seek our fortunes. Won't it be rather good in Italy now? We don't know what we shall do when we get there, or where we shall go; but something nice, for sure."
 
"I'm glad," said Rodney. "It's a good country in the spring. Shall you walk the roads with Thomas slung¹⁰ over your back, or what?"
 
"I don't know. Partly, I daresay. But we want to find some little place between the hills and the sea, and stay there. Perhaps for always; I don't know. It's going to be extraordinarily¹¹ nice, anyhow."
 
Rodney glanced at him, caught by the ring in his voice, a ring he hadn't heard for long. He didn't quite understand Peter. When last he saw him, he had been very far through, alarmingly near the bottom. Was this recovery natural grace, or had something happened? It seemed to Rodney rather admirable, and he looked appreciatively at Peter's cheerful face and happy eyes.
 
"Good," he said. "Good—splendid!"
 
And then Peter, meeting his pleased look and understanding it, winced¹² back from it, and coloured, and bent¹³ over his brown paper and string. He valued Rodney's appreciation¹⁴, a thing not easily won. He felt that in this moment he had won it, as he had never won it before. For he knew that Rodney liked pluck, and was thinking him plucky¹⁵.
 
Against his will he muttered, half beneath his breath, "Oh, it isn't really what you call good. It is good, you know: I think it's good; but you won't. You'll call it abominable¹⁶."
 
"Oh," said Rodney.
 
Peter went on, with a new violence, "I know all you'll say about it, so I'm not going to give you the opportunity of saying it till I'm gone. You needn't think I'm going to tell you now and let you tell me I'm wrong. I'm not wrong; and if I am I don't care. Please don't stay any more; I'd rather you weren't here to-night. I don't want to tell you anything; only I had just got to say that, because you were thinking.... Oh, do go now."
 
Rodney sat quite still and looked at him, into him, through him, beyond him. Then he said, "You needn't tell me anything. I know. Lucy and you are going together."
 
Peter stood up, rather unsteadily.
 
"Well? That's not clever. Any fool could have guessed that."
 
"Yes. And any fool could guess what I'm going to say about it, too. You know it all already, of course...."
 
Rodney was groping for words, helplessly, blindly.
 
"Peter, I didn't know you had it in you to be a cad."
 
Peter was putting books into a portmanteau, and did not answer.
 
"You mean to do that ... to Denis...."
 
Peter put in socks and handkerchiefs.
 
"And to Lucy.... I don't understand you, Peter.... I simply don't understand. Are you mad—or drunk—or didn't I really ever know you in the least?"
 
Peter stuffed in Thomas' nightgowns, crumpling¹⁷ them hideously¹⁸.
 
"Very well," said Rodney, very quietly. "It doesn't particularly matter which it is. In any case you are not going to do it. I shall prevent it."
 
"You can't," Peter flung at him, crushing a woolly rabbit in among Thomas' clothes.
 
Rodney sat still and looked at him, resting his chin on his hand; looked into him, through him, beyond him.
 
"I believe I can," he said simply.
 
Peter stopped filling the bag, and, still sitting on the floor by it, delivered himself at last.
 
"We care for each other. Isn't that to count, then? We always have cared for each other. Are we to do without each other for always? We want each other, we need each other. Denis doesn't need Lucy. He never did; not as I do. Are Lucy and I to do without each other, living only half a life, because of him? I tell you, I'm sick to death of doing without things. The time has come when it won't do any more, and I'm going to take what I can. I think I would rob anyone quite cheerfully if he had what I wanted. A few days ago I did rob; I bought things I knew I couldn't pay for. I'm sending them back now simply because I don't want them any more, not because I'm sorry I took them. It was fair I should take them; it was my turn to have things, mine and Thomas's. And now I'm going to take this, and keep it, till it's taken away from me. I daresay it will be taken away soon; my things always are. Everything has broken and gone, one thing after another, all my life—all the things I've cared for. I'm tired of it. I was sick of it by the time I was ten years old, sick of always getting ill or smashed up; and that's gone on ever since, and people have always thought, I know, 'Oh, it's only him, he never minds anything, he doesn't count, he's just a crock, and his only use is to play the fool for us.' But I did mind; I did. And I only played the fool because it would have been drearier¹⁹ still not to, and because there was always something amusing left to laugh at, not because I didn't mind. And then I cared for Denis as ... Oh, but you know how I cared for Denis. He was the most bright and splendid thing I knew in all the splendid world ... and he chucked me, because everything went wrong that could go wrong between us without my fault ... and our friendship was spoilt.... And I cared for Hilary and Peggy; and they would go and do things to spoil all our lives, and the more I tried, like an ass⁶, to help, the more I seemed to mess things up, till the crash came, and we all went to bits together. And we had to give up the only work we liked—and I did love mine so—and slave at things we hated. And still we kept sinking and sinking, and crashing on worse and worse rocks, till we hadn't a sound piece left to float us. And then, when I thought at least we could go down together, they went away and left me behind. So I'd failed there too, hopelessly. I always have failed in everything I've tried. I tried to make Rhoda happy, but that failed too. She left me; and now she's dead, and Thomas hasn't any mother at all.... And Lucy ... whom I'd cared for since before I could remember ... and I'd always thought, without thinking about it, that some day of course we should be together... Lucy left me, and our caring became wrong, so that at last we didn't care to see one another at all. And then it was as if hell had opened and let us in. The other things hadn't counted like that; health, money, beautiful things, interesting work, honour, friends, marriage, even Denis—they'd all collapsed²⁰ and I did mind, horribly. But not like that. As long as I could see Lucy sometimes, I could go on—and I had Thomas too, though I don't know why he hasn't collapsed yet. But at last, quite suddenly, when the emptiness and the losing had been getting to seem worse and worse for a long time, they became so bad that they were impossible. I got angry; it was for Thomas more than for myself, I think; and I said it should end. I said I would take things; steal them, if I couldn't get them by fair means. And I went down to Astleys, to see them, to tell them it must end. And in the woods I met Lucy. And she'd been getting to know too that it must end, for her sake as well as for mine.... And so we're going to end it, and begin again. We're going to be happy, because life is too jolly to miss."
 
Peter ended defiantly²¹, and flung his razor in among the socks.
 
Rodney had listened quietly, his eyes on Peter's profile. When he stayed silent, Peter supposed that he had at last convinced him of the unbreakable strength of his purpose for iniquity²², and that he would give him up and go away. After a minute he turned and looked up at Rodney, and said, "Now do you see that it's no good?"
 
Rodney took out his pipe and knocked it out and put it away before he answered:
 
"I'm glad you've said all that, Peter. Not that I didn't know it all before; of course I did. When I said at first that I didn't understand you, I was lying. I did understand, perfectly²³ well. But I'm glad you've said it, because it's well to know that you realise it so clearly yourself. It saves my explaining it to you. It gives us a common knowledge to start on. And now may I talk for a little, please? No, not for a little; for some time."
 
"Go on," said Peter. "But it's no use, you know.... What do you mean by our common knowledge? The knowledge that I'm a failure?"
 
Rodney nodded. "Precisely²⁴ that. You've stated the case so clearly yourself—in outline, for you've left out a great deal, of course—that really it doesn't leave much for me to say. Let's leave you alone for the moment. I want to talk about other people. There are other people in the world besides ourselves, of course, improbable as the fact occasionally seems. The fact, I mean, that it's a world not of individual units but of closely connected masses of people, not one of whom stands alone. One can't detach oneself; one's got to be in with one camp or another. The world's full of different and opposing camps—worse luck. There are the beauty-lovers and the beauty-scorners, and all the fluctuating masses in between, like most of us, who love some aspects of it and scorn others. There are the well-meaning and the ill-meaning—and again the incoherent cross-benchers, who mean a little good and a little harm and for the most part mean nothing at all either way. Again, there are what people call the well-bred, the ill-bred, and of course the half-bred. An idiotic²⁵ division that, because what do we know, any of us, of breeding, that we should call it good or bad? But there it is; a most well-marked division in everyone's eyes. And (and now I'm getting to the point) there are the rich and the poor—or call them, rather, the Haves and the Have-nots. I don't mean with regard to money particularly, though that comes in. But it's an all-round, thing. It's an undoubted fact, and one there's no getting round, that some people are born with the acquiring faculty²⁶, and others with the losing. Most of us, of course, are in the half-way house, and win and lose in fairly average proportions. But some of us seem marked out either for the one or for the other. I know personally a good many in both camps. Many more of the Have-nots, though, because I prefer to cultivate their acquaintance. There's a great deal to be done for the Haves too; they need, I fancy, all the assistance they can get if they're not to become prosperity-rotten. The Have-Nots haven't that danger; but they've plenty of dangers of their own; and, well, I suppose it's a question of taste, and that I prefer them. Anyhow, I do know a great many. People, you understand, with nothing at all that seems to make life tolerable. Destitutes, incapables, outcasts, slaves to their own lusts²⁷ or to a grinding economic system or to some other cruelty of fate or men. Whatever the immediate²⁹ cause of their ill-fortune may be, its underlying³⁰, fundamental cause is their own inherent faculty for failure and loss, their incompetence³¹ to take and hold the good things of life. You know the stale old hackneyed cry of the anti-socialists, how it would be no use equalising conditions because each man would soon return again to his original state. It's true in a deeper sense than they mean. You might equalise economic conditions as much as you please, but you'd never equalise fundamental conditions; you'd never turn the poor into the rich, the Have-Nots into the Haves. You know I'm not a Socialist³². I don't want to see a futile³³ attempt to throw down barriers and

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