“Oh, don’t,” said Maud.
“Very well. But I feel with you about strength. It is an adorable quality to women. And it is that which so troubles me about Thurso. I know—the throwing away of the bottle proves it—that he is fighting; but is he strong enough? He was weak when he allowed himself to form a habit that he knew was harmful.”
She threw her hands wide.
“Oh, it is so awful!” she said. “One begins by saying, ‘I shall do this when I choose,’ and so soon. This says, ‘You shall do it when I choose.’ Personally, I always make it a rule to give anything up before I begin to want it very badly.”
There was an irony in this, too. The remembrance of what chiefly kept her awake last night made her know that her rule was not always quite easy to follow. But this was secret from Maud.
“You, who get all you want!” she said, speaking from outside.
Catherine got up, and began walking up and down the small angle of lawn where they sat, bordering the deep flower-bed. All June was in flower there, just as in herself, to the outside view, all June seemed to be flowering. It was no wonder that Maud thought that. But all the emotional baggage which she had consistently thrown away all her life seemed to her to be coming back now in bales, returned to her by some dreadful dead-letter office—at least, she had hoped it was dead—and a sudden bitterness, born of perplexity, invaded her.
“Oh yes; everybody always thinks one is happy,” she said, “if one has good digestion and a passable appearance, and heaps of things to do, and the enjoyment in doing them which I have, and as much money as one wants. But all these things only give one pleasure. Do you think I am happy? Do you really think so?”
Maud dropped her eyes. When talk deepens it is well to talk in the dark, or to talk without the distraction of sight.
“No, I don’t think you are,” she said, “if I look deep down.”