'The offence?'
'The absenting myself.'
'Oh! that you did because you thought it right.'
'I want to be clear that it was right.'
'What do you mean?' cried she, astonished. 'It was a great piece of self-denial, and I only felt it wrong not to be doing the same.'
'Nay, how should such creatures as you need the same discipline as I?'
She exclaimed to herself how far from his equal she was--how weak, idle, and self-pleasing she felt herself to be; but she could not say so--the words would not come; and she only drooped her little head, humbled by his treating her as better than himself.
He proceeded:-'Something wrong I have done, and I want the clue. Was it self-will in choosing discipline contrary to your mother's judgment? Yet she could not know all. I thought it her kindness in not liking me to lose the pleasure. Besides, one must act for oneself, and this was only my own personal amusement.'
'Yes,' said Amy, timidly hesitating.
'Well?' said he, with the gentle, deferential tone that contrasted with his hasty, vehement self-accusations. 'Well?' and he waited, though not so as to hurry or frighten her, but to encourage, by showing her words had weight.
'I was thinking of one thing,' said Amy; 'is it not sometimes right to consider whether we ought to disappoint people who want us to be pleased?'
'There it is, I believe,' said Guy, stopping and considering, then going on with a better satisfied air, 'that is a real rule. Not to be so bent on myself as to sacrifice other people's feelings to what seems best for me. But I don't see whose pleasure I interfered with.'
Amy could have answered, 'Mine;' but the maidenly feeling checked her again, and she said, 'We all thought you would like it.'
'And I had no right to sacrifice your pleasure! I see, I see. The pleasure of giving pleasure to others is so much the best there is on earth, that one ought to be passive rather than interfere with it.'
'Yes,' said Amy, 'just as I have seen Mary Ross let herself be swung till she was giddy, rather than disappoint Charlotte and Helen, who thought she liked it.'
'If one could get to look at everything with as much indifference as the swinging! But it is all selfishness. It is as easy to be selfish for one's own good as for one's own pleasure; and I dare say, the first is as bad as the other.'