Reuben faced his adversity with set teeth and a dogged countenance. He had not been farming thirty odd years to be beaten casually by the weather. Scorching heat and blighting cold, the still blanker doom of the trickling, pouring rain--the wind that seeded his corn, and beat down his hay, and flung his hop-bines together in muddled heaps--the pests that Nature breeds by the ten million out of her own putrefyings and misbegettings--all things in life from the lowest maggot to the fiercest storm--he was out to fight them. In challenging Boarzell he had challenged them all. In time his struggle began to modify his relations with Rose. At first he had told himself that her uselessness was only apparent. Though she herself did no fighting, she gave such rest and refreshment to the soldier that he went forth strengthened to the war. He had almost begun to attribute to her his daily renewed courage, and had once or twice been moved to show his gratitude by acts of expensive indulgence. Now slowly he began to see that this gratitude was misleading--better receive no comfort from Rose than pay for it too dear. He must make her understand that he could not afford to keep a useless and extravagant wife, however charming she might be. Rose must do her share, as Naomi had done, as his mother had done, as his children had done. Sometimes he would expostulate with her, and when she met his expostulations with blandishments, he would feel himself yielding, and grow so furious that he would turn upon her in rage and indignation. Rose was not like Naomi; in her own words "she gave as good as she got," and once or twice, for the first time in his life, Reuben found himself in loud and vulgar altercation with a female. He had never before had a woman stand up to him, and the experience was humiliating. He had used to turn from Boarzell to her for rest, and now he found himself turning from her to Boarzell. It was part of the baffling paradox that the thing he fought should also be the thing he loved, and the battlefield his refuge. Out on the Moor, with the south-west wind rolling over him like the waves of some huge earth-scented sea, he drank in the spirit of conflict, he was swept back into the cleanness and singleness of his warfare. It was then that Boarzell nerved him for its own subduing, stripped his heart of softness, cleansed it of domestic fret. Rose and her love and sweetness were all very well, but he was out for something greater than Rose--he must keep in mind that she was only a part of things. Why, he himself was only a part of things, and in his cravings and softenings must be conquered and brushed aside even as Rose. In challenging Boarzell he had challenged the secret forces of his own body, all the riot of hope and weakness and desire that go to make a man. The battle was not to be won except over the heaped bodies of the slain, and on the summit of the heap would lie his own. § 8.