He wanted to smash Tilly even more than he wanted to smash Realf. He had seen her twice since her marriage--meeting her once in Rye, and once on Boarzell--and each sight had worked him into a greater rage. Her little figure had strengthened and filled out, her demure self-confidence had increased, her prettiness was even more adorable now that the rose had deepened on her cheeks and her gowns strained over her breast; she was enough to fill any man with wrath at the joke of things. Tilly ought to be receiving the wages of her treachery in weariness and anxiety, fading colour and withering flesh--and here she was all fat and rosy and happy, well-fed and well-beloved. He hated her and called her a harlot--because she had betrayed Odiam for hire and trafficked in its shame. § 16. He had been forced to engage a woman to help Caro in the house, and also a shepherd for Richard's work. His family had been whittled down to almost nothing. Only Caro, Pete, and Jemmy were left out of his eight splendid boys and girls. Caro, Pete, Jemmy, and hideous, mumbling Harry--he surveyed the four of them with contemptuous scowls. Pete was the only one who was worth anything--Caro and Jemmy would turn against him if they had the slightest chance and forsake him with the rest. As for Harry, he was a grotesque, an image, a hideous fum--"Reuben himself as he really was." He! He! The weeks wore on and it dawned on him that he must pull himself together for a fresh campaign. He must have more warriors--he could not fight Boarzell with only traitors and hirelings. He must marry again. It was some time since the abstract idea of marriage had begun to please him, but lately the abstract of marriage had always led to the concrete of Alice Jury, so he had driven it from his thoughts. Now, more and more clearly, he saw that he must marry. He wanted a woman and he wanted children, so he must marry. But he must not marry Alice. Of late he had resumed his visits to Cheat Land, discontinued for a while at Tilly's marriage. The attraction of Alice Jury was as strong, unfathomable, and unaccountable as ever. Since the stormy interview after Richard's desertion they had not discussed his ambitions for Odiam and Boarzell, but that meeting was none the less stamped on Reuben's memory with a gloomy significance. It was not that Alice's arguments had affected him at all--she had not penetrated to the springs of his enterprise, she had not touched or conjured the hidden part of him in which his ambition's roots were twined round all that was vital and sacred in the man. But somehow she had expressed her own attitude with an almost sinister clearness--"It's I who am fighting Boarzell." What should she fight it for?--imagine that she fought it, rather, for a woman could not really fight Boarzell. She was fighting it for him. She wanted him.