"I'm not sure about that," she said, answering her friend's last words after a deep pause of deliberation. "I mean about its being so pleasant to be found interesting. I'm sure the passive part is always the dull one: life has been a great deal more thrilling since we found out that we revolved about the sun, instead of sitting still and fancying that all the planets were dancing attendance on us. After all, they were not; and it's rather humiliating to think how the morning stars must have laughed together about it!"
There was no self-complacency in Justine's eagerness to help. It was far easier for her to express it in action than in counsel, to grope for the path with her friend than to point the way to it; and when she had to speak she took refuge in figures to escape the pedantry of appearing to advise. But it was not only to Mrs. Dressel that her parables were dark, and the blank look in Bessy's eyes soon snatched her down from the height of metaphor.
"I mean," she continued with a smile, "that, as human nature is constituted, it has got to find its real self—the self to be interested in—outside of what we conventionally call 'self': the particular Justine or Bessy who is clamouring for her particular morsel of life. You see, self isn't a thing one can keep in a box—bits of it keep escaping, and flying off to lodge in all sorts of unexpected crannies; we come across scraps of ourselves in the most unlikely places—as I believe you would in Westmore, if you'd only go back there and look for them!"
Bessy's lip trembled and the colour sprang to her face; but she answered with a flash of irritation: "Why doesn't he look for me there, then—if he still wants to find me?"
"Ah—it's for him to look here—to find himself here," Justine murmured.
"Well, he never comes here! That's his answer."
"He will—he will! Only, when he does, let him find you."
"Find me? I don't understand. How can he, when he never sees me? I'm no more to him than the carpet on the floor!"
Justine smiled again. "Well—be that then! The thing is to be."
"Under his feet? Thank you! Is that what you mean to marry for? It's not what husbands admire in one, you know!"