“Wednesday next,” said Hugh.
She rose, feeling suddenly the flatness that succeeds every climax.
“I am so tired,” she said. “I think I shall go to bed at once.”
Hugh came close to her; the climax was not yet over for him.
“And are you satisfied at all?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No, Hughie, I shall never be satisfied, I hope,” she said. “I shall always expect more of you than the most. It is the most now.”
Edith went up to bed immediately, leaving Hugh drinking gluttonously of cigarette-smoke after the total abstinence of the last day or two. She felt hopelessly tired, but was afraid that her tiredness was of that quality which would prevent her sleeping. But, tired though she was, she felt she would not in the least mind lying awake, for the pastures on which her mind would browse during the hours of the night were green and fresh, and there would be for her no painful wandering along stony roads, such as she had known in years gone by, no struggling through the shifting sands of an interminable desert. But, contrary to her expectation, she had no sooner put out her light than she slept, and for three hours or so slept deep and dreamlessly. Then she woke as suddenly as she had gone to sleep, woke into complete consciousness, and took up again, as if it had been never interrupted, the little thread of thought which had eluded her a few hours ago, for then it had lain asleep among the grasses and flowers, so to speak, of her pasture, only showing in tiny lengths among them. But now it had wriggled its way up, and lay in a long straight line, easy to trace. It stretched far back, too, right back to the day on which nearly a year ago Peggy had tried to dissuade her from her marriage, and it stretched forward into the future as far as her eye could follow.
Yes; she knew now why Hugh’s sudden change of mood had startled and shocked her. It was because he was so young. It was the elastic spring and shout of youth that had made her wince—the spring which darted from point to point of its happiness, exulting in each. And why could not she dart and shout with him? Because that elasticity had left her; she was so much older than he. It was as Peggy had said.
She lay quite still a moment while this was presented, as if some external agency held up a mirror to her, to her mind. It was all quite clear, and she had no impulse whatever to question its authenticity, and for the next moment or two, as if she had received some evil news in the few convincing words of a telegram, she laid it down and took note of the exterior trivial details of material things.