“That is just what Booker T. Washington said at the lecture this morning,” Virginia went on. “He said he had never made a single sacrifice, but he had always done the thing he loved to do most. It is fun to do good. It makes us feel so virtuous. And we do it because we like most to see other people happy.”
“That is what I mean, Virginia.”
“I don’t think it is so, always,” said Ruth. “I think often people are just forced to give up things and sacrifice themselves, when they don’t like it at all.”
“That’s different,” I said, “if it is enforced. I meant voluntary self-sacrifice.”
“Even so,” she went on, “suppose you are going out somewhere, and you have to stay at home with some person who is ill, just because you are asked to do it. You don’t like it, but you do it, anyway.”
“Probably,” I answered, “you love that person and that person’s pleasure far more than you do, say, the theatre.”
“No,” said Ruth, “perhaps you don’t love the person at all.”
“But you love to feel virtuous,” Virginia said, “and all the time you stay at home you are saying bad things, mentally, about that person.”
“But you stay from choice, you please your bigger self and its demands for beauty,” I went on; “you give up what you want for what you want more.”
“Yes,” Virginia said, “for you would be uncomfortable and unhappy if you went.”