“I asked you to have pity on yourself just now,” she said. “But have pity on Hugh. Edith, don’t be selfish.”
The moment she had said it she wished she had not. Edith winced as if she had struck her.
“Ah!” she said, and that was all, but she dropped Peggy’s hand. But Peggy, though she felt brutal, though she felt torn in two, went on.
“Yes, selfish,” she said. “You are taking so much, you are taking all the best years of a young man’s life, and giving him a life from which youth is past. It isn’t fair. It is selfish.”
She looked up at Edith, who sat quite still; next moment she flung herself on the ground and knelt beside her, for she saw the uselessness of this also.
“Oh, my darling, I can’t go on,” she said. “Forget that I said it. I have known you so long, and loved you so much, and you never did a selfish thing, and could not. Do forgive me!”
Edith took her hands again in hers.
“Dear, how can you ask me to forgive?” she said. “As if you could do anything to me that needs forgiveness? So go on!”
“But I can’t. Besides, that is all; I have said it all,” whispered Peggy.
“But it seems to you that I am being selfish,” repeated Edith.