Thanks, no." (This was to me, who had risen to bring her chair back to its former place.) "Pray don't disturb yourself. This tree and the grass make a very nice easy-chair. What is the lesson that one always reads wrong?"
Arthur was silent for a minute. "I would like to be clear what it is I mean," he said, slowly and thoughtfully, "before I say anything to youbecause you think about it."
Anything approaching to a compliment was so unusual an utterance for Arthur, that it brought a flush of pleasure to her cheek, as she replied "It is you, that give me the ideas to think about."
"One's first thought," Arthur proceeded, "in reading of anything specially vile or barbarous, as done by a fellow-creature, is apt to be that we see a new depth of Sin revealed beneath us: and we seem to gaze down into that abyss from some higher ground, far apart from it."
"I think I understand you now. You mean that one ought to thinknot 'God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are'but 'God, be merciful to me also, who might be, but for Thy grace, a sinner as vile as he!'"
