“I’m sorry to say,” mourned Peter, “that the more he wants it, the less likely she is to go.”
She tried not to exult too openly at that. “And then,” she said, “there’s Effie.”
“Effie!” He spoke in scandalized protest.
“Aye, that’s her name, and yon’s just the tone of voice I had myself when I first heard of her. I want you to see Effie.”
“Never!” said Peter, and for a mild man his bitterness was remarkable.
“Then I must show her to you,” said Anne placidly, “and that’ll mean going back a bit and showing you other things as well. It’ll mean,” and she very much regretted it, “showing you this.” She held out her hand and pointed to the scar. “When Sam told me he wanted to marry Ada, I came to see her. I saw what I saw, and I told him she’d be the ruin of him. He didn’t believe me, and I tried to make him see I meant it. I put my hand into the fire, and I thought to keep it there till he agreed with me, but he’s stronger in the arm than me, and he got me away.” She spoke without passion, in simple narrative which Peter found impressed him deeply. “So I left him and earned my living, and all that. Sam married her, and the ruin’s come, but it’s not come suddenly. It’s been coming all the time. I’d date it back,” she reflected, “to the day when he fooled you about the ‘Social Evil’ pamphlet. He did that because he wanted a rich husband for Ada.”
Peter had nothing to say. If he had not known before that Sam had “fooled” him, he did not doubt it now.
“And it grew from that. He’s made money because Ada wanted money, and after that it grew to be a bad habit. He made it then by writing lies about himself in the papers, and I don’t know how he’s done it since then, except that it has been by more lies. He began to fancy himself at politics. He wanted to be a crowing cock, and it didn’t matter if he crowed on a dung-heap so long as he crowed. And Ada didn’t care. He gave her money, and she didn’t care. She didn’t love, and he didn’t love, and there’s a thing you said just now that I’ll remind you of. You said God’s love. I’ll leave it to you to name what it is when there isn’t love.
“And then love came to Sam. Effie came, and you say that God is love. Sam put it to me in another way. He said he’d found salvation. Well, it’s a big word, and I dunno. But I do know he found love and it changed him. He’s done with politics, and he’s done with crowing and with riches, too. Effie did that by the power of love, and there’s another thing she did, that’s marked yon lass for me as the finest, strangest woman in the width of the world. She gave him up and sent him back to Ada. Well, I’ve heard of sacrifice before, and I’ve done a bit that way myself, but give up a man she loved and teach him how to make a woman of his wife, and send him home to do it--it’s more than I can rise to. And that is Effie Mannering.