Sam, at any rate, was not etherealizing things. He did not appreciate the happiness of renouncing happiness. He wanted it to last, to go on with the gay days on the hills when she put health into his body and health into his mind, when it was all a high-spirited riot without an undertow. For hours on end, they lived their lives unclouded by a thought... rude, rough, exhilarating exercise on the glamorous fells like that illustrious day when they climbed the Pike and lost themselves in mist and found themselves again just where they wished to be, on the downward trail by Corner Tarn to Yorkdale: then on the steamer down the Lake, and the lonely moonlight walk across the Moor to Branley, where the trap from the Inn met them and took them, comfortably tired, to Marbeck and a giant’s feast. And there were other days, more leisured, on their Lake or in the woods when more seemed to happen in his soul and less in his body; and their day of Bathes, in five well separated tarns, with a makeweight bathe in the Marsland Beck for luck. He wanted it to last. He had intoxication of the hills, of her, of everything. He had not seen, he would not and he could not, see the possibility of her leaving him. He did not know that leaving him was as fundamental a part of her plan as coming to him. “We’ll go hack to Manchester,” she said, and it seemed to him that he was ordered hack to hell. “That’s where your business is,” she added, a little wickedly. Business! Hadn’t she shown him the ugliness of his business, and the beauty of Marbeck? Why should they ever leave the hills? He had all the extremity of a convert. Effie would say no more, and now, as the end of their time grew near, the magic seemed to him less magical, because he had to leave it, because she would not stay for ever in that lonely place, but wanted him to go where other men lived, in an ugly town, where he had a business she had taught him to despise, and responsibilities, and Ada. He plunged to gloom. What was the use of knowing that there was light if he must go back to darkness? Was it not treachery in her to come so far with him, then leave him to himself? “Effie!” he pleaded, and she consented to make things clear. “Don’t you see, Sam? We’ve done what we came here to do. You’ve seen, you know, and you will not slide back. I won’t allow you to.” “You won’t allow! Then you’ll be there?” “I hope my spirit will be always there,” she said. “Do you doubt that?” “Spirit?” he said. “You’re overrating me. You’re asking more than I can give. I cannot give what isn’t there.” “I’ve put it there,” she said. “You cannot fail. You can’t forget.” * “I’d not forget, but I should fail. It’s we, my dear. Not I alone, but you and I. Without you I am lost.” She made a great concession. “Then, if you’re sure----” “Quite sure,” he said, and she decided to indulge his weakness. “Then don’t dismiss your secretary. Then I’ll be there.” “As secretary?”