`I know I've been wrong - often, continually.But yet, sometimes when Ihave done wrong, it has been because I have feelings that you would be the better for if you had them.If you were in fault ever - if you had done anything very wrong, I should be sorry for the pain it brought you - I should not want punishment to be heaped on you.But you have always enjoyed punishing me - you have always been hard and cruel to me - even when I was a little girl, and always loved you better than any one else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without forgiving me.You have no pity - you have no sense of your own imperfection and you own sins.
It is a sin to be hard - it is not fitting for a mortal - for a Christian.
You are nothing but a Pharisee.You thank God for nothing but your own virtues - you think they are great enough to win you everything else.You have not even a vision of feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are mere darkness!'
`Well,' said Tom, with cold scorn, `if your feelings are so much better than mine, let me see you show them in some other way than by conduct that's likely to disgrace us all - than by ridiculous flights first into one extreme and then into another.Pray, how have you shown your love that you talk of either to me or my father? By disobeying and deceiving us.I have a different way of showing my affection.'
`Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in the world.'
`Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can.'
`So I will submit to what I acknowledge and feel to be right.I will submit even to what is unreasonable from my father, but I will not submit to it from you.You boast of your virtues as if they purchased you a right to be cruel and unmanly as you've been today.Don't suppose I would give up Philip Wakem in obedience to you.The deformity you insult would make me cling to him and care for him the more.'
`Very well - that is your view of things,' said Tom, more coldly than ever.`You need say no more to show me what a wide distance there is between us.Let us remember that in future and be silent.'
Tom went back to St Ogg's, to fulfil an appointment with his uncle Deane, and receive directions about a journey on which he was to set out the next morning.
Maggie went up to her own room to pour out all that indignant remonstrance, against which Tom's mind was close barred, in bitter tears.Then, when the first burst of unsatisfied anger was gone by, came the recollection of that quiet time before the pleasure which had ended in today's misery had perturbed the clearness and simplicity of her life.She used to think in that time that she had made great conquests, and won a lasting stand on serene heights above worldly temptations and conflict.And here she was down again in the thick of a hot strife with her own and others' passions.
Life was not so short, then, and perfect rest was not so near, as she had dreamed when she was two years younger? There was more struggle for her - perhaps more falling.If she had felt that she was entirely wrong and that Tom had been entirely right, she could sooner have recovered more inward harmony, but now her penitence and submission were constantly obstructed by resentment that would present itself to her no otherwise than as just.
Her heart bled for Philip - she went on recalling the insults that had been flung at him with so vivid a conception of what he had felt under them, that it was almost like a sharp bodily pain to her, making her beat the floor with her foot, and tighten her fingers on her palm.
And yet - how was it that she was now and then conscious of a certain dim background of relief in the forced separation from Philip? Surely it was only because the sense of a deliverance from concealment was welcome at any cost?
