But of course she couldn’t be. Nobody can be let alone except those who would give all the world for a little tiresome interference. Molly saw at once how tired she was, and wanted her to lie down and have dinner brought up to her. Robert, by saying nothing at all, was still more difficult to endure.
“I’m not particularly tired, Molly, thank you,” said Mrs. Champney, with great politeness.
What she wanted to do was to stamp her foot and cry:
“Let me alone! Let me alone! Tomorrow is Saturday, and the next day is Sunday. You can talk to me on Sunday. Let me alone now!”
She sternly repressed all this. She sat down at the table and tried to eat her dinner. She forced herself to remain in the sitting room until ten o’clock.
“In a week or two I’ll go away and get a room for myself,” she thought, “where I can be as tired as I like!”
When the clock struck ten, she sat still and counted up to five hundred, so that she wouldn’t seem like a tired person in a dreadful hurry to get to bed. Then she rose, said good night to Robert and Molly, and went upstairs.
Even then she would not slight or omit any detail of her routine. She washed, rubbed cold cream into her hands, braided her hair, folded her clothes neatly, ready for the morning, and knelt down to say her prayers. Then she turned out the light, opened the window, and got into bed; and she was so glad to be there, so glad to lay her tired gray head on the pillow, that she cried.
She was ashamed of this weakness, and meant to struggle against it; but sleep came before she had driven it away—a heavy and sorrowful sleep, colored with the mist of tears.
She slept. Then she sighed, and stirred in her sleep. Something was coming through into the shadowy world of dreams—something imperious and menacing. She didn’t want to wake up, but something was forcing her to do so. She heard something calling.