“Dear Alys,” she said, softly, “I want to thank you.”
“To thank me,” replied Alys, in astonishment. “Oh, no, Mary, all the thanks are, must be, on one side.”
“No,” said Mary, “I have many things to thank you for. You have been so patient and sweet, and so grateful for the little I have been able to do for you. And one thing I may thank you for certainly.”
“What?” whispered Alys.
“For loving me,” said Mary. “You have done me good, Alys. I was growing, not perhaps exactly selfish, but self-centred. I put my own home and my own people before everything else, in a narrow-minded way, and I fancied that people who were different from us externally—people who had had fewer struggles and more luxuries than my parents—must of necessity be narrow-minded and self-absorbed and unsympathising. Alys, it is absurd, but do you know I do believe I have myself been growing into the very thing I so detested—I do believe, in a sense, I was encouraging a kind of class prejudice?”
Alys listened attentively.
“I see what you mean,” she said. “Mary, you are awfully honest.”
“I don’t know,” replied Mary, vaguely. “Self-deception must be a kind of dishonesty.”
Alys hardly heard her. She was watching eagerly for the upshot of this confession, yet afraid of startling away the concession she was hoping for by any premature congratulation on her friend’s altered views. So she lay, without speaking, till at last Mary’s silence roused her to new misgiving.
“Won’t you go on with what you were saying?” she ventured at last.