He looked across at Effie’s chair. “My spirit will be always with you,” she had said; he wondered if it were there now, and tried to see her. Surely now, if ever, was her time; now when he had so lately left her, when her scent was in his nostrils and her voice in his ears. Her voice _was_ in his ears. He heard it clearly. She spoke one word, “Renounce.” “Yes, but, my dear,” he argued, “I have renounced. I’ve renounced you. I’ve come back here and I’m going to Ada, to plumb the depths of her, to find the good in her, and drag it to the top. I’m going to dive for pearls,” he grew almost picturesque as he cited his intentions towards Ada in his defence, “and I shall grow short of breath. I’m not doubting that the pearls are there, because Ada’s a woman, and so are you, but I know that they lie deep and I want breath for such a dive as that. I’ve renounced you, and I’m going to make a woman of her; don’t I deserve some recompense to make amends? It’s here beneath my hand, and I have only to say ‘Yes.’ Effie,” he pleaded, “if you knew what this meant to me, you wouldn’t frown. It’s not backsliding.” He denied that it was backsliding, well knowing that it was. “It’s politics, I know, and you don’t like politics. You told me women knew about politics now. Oh, but you don’t know, you don’t. Smile at me, Effie, smile as I have seen women smile when men talked of golf. I know we men are babies, and so do you. Give me my game. It’s nothing but a hobby, like golf, but this is mine, and I want it so much. Ada is my work and this is my play, and just as necessary. It will not be a hindrance to what I have to do for Ada, it will be a help. Effie, tell me that I may have my help.” He tried to blarney a consenting smile out of the figure of Eflie he imagined sitting in her chair. He had no difficulty in imagining her there; he saw her, too easily, too really to imagine a false Effie. He could not imagine, try as he would, that he had won consent from her. He was too near the real Effie for that. And Effie said “Renounce.” Then his cashier came into the office and routine swallowed him for the day. A score of little points had arisen in his absence and must be discussed and settled. The thought occurred to him that if he telegraphed to London in the morning, Headquarters would hear from him as soon as if he wrote to-day. They might expect a wire to-day; well, they would not get it. He crammed the letter into his pocket and decided that he would sleep upon it before he sent them his reply. And if Satan still smiled it was wistfully, as if he regretted his lost subtlety; but there was still Ada, the married woman. If Ada was nothing else, she was a married woman; in a world where many fail, she had succeeded; she had got married, and, like other people who have reached their earthly paradise, she did not know what to do when she got there, and did nothing. She stopped growing when she married.