He could have howled for very shame, he could not, in fairness, think that Ada had given him anything, but writhed that he had thought just now of Anne and Effie as the two women who counted in his life. They were the women who gave. Was he to take all from women and render nothing to a woman in return? If he could say of Ada, his wife these last ten years, that she did not count, then he was very much to blame and the path was clear before him. He saw to where the gleam that Effie gave him pointed. To Ada. It annoyed him desperately that it should point to Ada. He began to descend the hill in a cold fury. The world was hideous, Marbeck an illusion, Effie a fool. No: Effie was right. One could not run away from facts and hide one’s head amongst the hills, and say there were no facts. She had not brought him there to obscure facts, but to reveal them. It remained to face them, to return to Manchester with new knowledge and new courage. It needed courage to turn his back on Marbeck, to go away from happiness to Ada. He stamped upon that thought, as on a snake. It was disloyalty to Effie who had sacrificed to him and shown him all the beauty of her sacrifice. He, too, would sacrifice and find a beauty in it. He found it extraordinarily difficult to meet Effie, and spent an unnecessarily long time with the landlord of the Inn. Then he went in to her. “I’m leaving,” he stammered. “I couldn’t stay another night. By driving fifteen miles I can catch the South Mail at midnight. I’ve arranged for you to come to-morrow.” He jerked each sentence out painfully. Effie met his eyes with her serene gaze. “That’s infinitely best,” she said. “I’m proud of you.” He had seen! It was her victory, complete and unequivocal, and she was proud of him and of herself. He had got rid of mud and he had seen beauty. Now he was facing the facts as she would have him face them, clear-eyed, without romance. Like her, he was a realist, and she was glad... glad. But when he went up to their room to pack his bag, Effie left the Inn quickly and walked hard. She must put space between them: space, that she might cry unheard. It seemed to her that if he heard her crying he would not go, and she wanted him to go. She was a realist. She was... stifling her sobs amongst the heather; triumphing in victory on Marbeck Ridge. She won, as she had said that she would win. But there were limits to her bravery. CHAPTER XXI--SATAN’S SMILE |THE theory that Satan is a subtle devil is one which will not bear examination. He is a crude fellow, theatrical, Mephistophelean. It may, of course, be only because his experience of human nature has made a cynic of him, and certainly his interferences do not as a rule lack success because they want delicacy. He attacked Sam with a blatant effrontery which suggested that he thought Sam’s a contemptuously easy case.