Jonas entered the Annex room and realized immediately that it was a day when he would be sent away. The Giver was rigid in his chair, his face in his hands.
"I'll come back tomorrow, sir." He said quickly. Then he hesitated. "Unless maybe there's something I can do to help."
The Giver looked up at him, his face contorted with suffering. "Please," he gasped, "take some of the pain." (15.1-3)
Until this moment, The Giver has always sent Jonas away when he was in too much pain. It's interesting to note which memory in particular was too much to bear: warfare.
Quote 11
"I felt sad today," he had heard his mother say, and they had comforted her.
But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt grief. He knew there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. (17.10-11)
It looks like everything is relative; Jonas thought he knew sadness and pain before he saw the intensity of the sadness and pain in the memories he received.
Quote 12
"Asher," Jonas said. He was trying to speak carefully, and with kindness, to say exactly what he wanted to say. "You had no way of knowing this. I didn't know it myself until recently. But it is a cruel game. In the past, there have – "
"I said I apologize, Jonas."
Jonas sighed. It was no use. Of course Asher couldn't understand. "I accept your apology, Asher," he said wearily. (17.37-39)
It's fitting that Asher ends the argument with empty words, when what Jonas was trying to do in the first place was get his friend to recognize how hollow his actions and words were.