“Yes, frightfully tired. But—oh! Peggy, it is only my happiness that makes me tired.”
“Happiness doesn’t make one tired,” said Peggy decisively. “That won’t do!”
She fidgeted with the tea-cups a moment.
“Oughtn’t you to go down into the country and just rest and live?” she asked.
“No; I am told to go down at the end of the month, and then—not exert myself. I shall do exactly as I am told to do, and you needn’t be afraid.”
“Then what tires you?” asked Peggy again.
Edith took up her tea-cup, and while she thought over what she would say made a natural pause just as Peggy had done, with the manual occupation of putting in sugar and milk. All the time she knew perfectly well what tired her, and that was the inward necessity, for it was no less than that, of living up to the level of youth which Hugh enjoyed without question or effort, simply because he was young. Her resolution after the dawn of nightmare, the hopeless dawn, had been exactly that. She had, by this inward necessity, to play at youth. She could do it, and did it admirably. But what was natural and instinctive to the young was obtained by her with effort. She did it wonderfully well; nobody guessed that it was an effort to her, and but admired the vitality to which years brought no diminution. But she knew, though nobody else knew, that the effort was there. And though Peggy’s question had struck to the root of the matter, there was nothing further from Edith’s mind than to tell her.
“But it is my happiness that tires me,” she said. “It is this living in a flame.”
But Peggy was not satisfied.
“Then were you tired all the time at Mannington?” she asked.