Edith gave a long sigh.
“Ah, you know I love his doing it!” she said.
“Then lonely soul probably started not with seeing that, but with something at lunch,” remarked Peggy.
“Oh, Peggy, you are good for me!” said Edith. “But there’s more lonely soul to come.”
“Well, I hope it’s more sensible than the last,” said Peggy. “At least I don’t, but you see what I mean. Out with it.”
“Well, it’s this. Since my marriage I have cared less about all other ‘Things in General’ except Hugh. I used to spend delightful days all alone here, always busy, busy with the garden, busy with books, busy with my writing. I’ve dropped them, and they used to be friends, and I feel ungrateful because, good heavens, how they helped me in those other years, and pulled me out of the mire and clay. I was so absorbed in my writing, and now all the creatures of my brain are dead. And that gave me a touch of lonely soul. ‘Gambits,’ for instance, used to be part of me, fused into me, and now it’s only a bit of mosaic, as you said, and I’m sure if anybody picked it out, I shouldn’t even know it was gone.”
Peggy did not say “pooh!” to this. Instead, she nodded her head quite gravely.
“Yes, I can quite understand how that gives you twinges of lonely soul,” she said.
“It only has this once,” said Edith in self-defence, “and that time it was started by something else.”
“That may be, but I do think there is material for lonely soul there. It’s quite true. You have dropped your friends, Edith, all but music, that is to say, and that is part of Hugh. How did it happen? Tell me.”