Something, indeed, of her fineness he did perceive, but not its whole, its utter selflessness. He saw, roughly, what she was after: that it was here, in Westmoreland when she made her sacrifice, here when she lay beside him in the sun that she expressed in deed what she had been baffled to express in Manchester. She had brought him away from the murk and the fog and the place where they rather like dirt than otherwise because dirt means money, to where nature was beautiful. She had shown him beauty there, her beauty and the beauty of sacrifice and the beauty of things. She had taught him that there was beauty in the world. “We’ll never go back,” he cried. “No. Not back,” she said. “But we will go to Manchester.” “No. No. We’ll build a tabernacle here.” “Here? No. We’ve been lawless here. We’ll go to Manchester.” It rang in his ears like the trump of doom. So far they had marched in thought together, and he imagined that in her scheme they were to be together to the end. He thought her purpose was that they two were to work together to give shape to beauty--and no bad exercise in perception, either, for Sam Branstone. That was her purpose, but, as she saw it, they were not to work together in the sense he meant. Her spirit was to go on with him, but she herself would stand aside, denying herself the right and the joy of sharing his work with him in physical partnership. She would have done her share at Marbeck: she was a sign-post whose direction he was to follow but which he left behind, not a guide to go with him on his way: and she thought she was content with that. She renounced and she imagined that of the two of them it was she who was the realist and he who was romantic, he was romantic because he wanted her with him and she the realist because she remembered Ada. She was not jealous of Ada no’; if she could not bless Ada, neither did she damn her. Ada had never held him as Effie held him now. She thought it satisfied her to know that she held him, and to let the days slip past uncounted. Nothing is infinite except our human capacity for self-deception. For the present, for the Marbeck heyday, it did satisfy her, and she went about the business of her tutelage with the unruffled serenity of fulfilled purpose, almost involuntarily now, thinking little, feeling everything in the passionate intensity of her sacramental love. It would end and she would suffer: meantime there were only so many days and it was no use impairing finite days with regrets that they were not infinite. Thought was for before and afterwards, not for now when she crusaded for the soul of Sammy Branstone with the mystic rapture of a trance, joyful like the other sorts of true religion. She would wake up, but she would have taught Sam his lesson; she would have given him his gleam; and she was selfless after that.... Of course she may have deceived herself. There is spiritual love, but Effie was flesh and blood.