Far better give up the struggle while there was the chance of an honourable retreat. He realised that he was at the turning point--a step further along his old course and he would lose Alice, a step along the road she pointed, and he would lose Boarzell. After all he had not won Boarzell, most likely never would win it--if he persisted on his old ways they would probably only lead him to ruin, and later there might be no Alice to turn to. If he renounced her now, he would be definitely pledging himself to Boarzell and all his soaring, tottering schemes--he would not be able to "come back" a second time. If he lost Alice now he might be losing her for a dream, a bubble, a will-o'-the-wisp. Surely he would be wise to pull what he could out of the wreck, take her, and forget all else. Only a fool would turn away from her now, and press forward. In the old days it had been different, he had been successful then--now he was a failure, and saw his chance to fail honourably. Better take it before it was too late. His mind painted him a picture it had never dared paint before--the comfortable red house basking in sunshine, with a garden full of flowers, a cow or two at pasture in the meadow, the little hop-field his only tilth--his dear frail wife sitting in the porch, his children playing at her feet or reading at her knee--perhaps they were hers too, perhaps they were not. He saw himself contented, growing stout, wanting nothing he hadn't got, so having nothing he didn't want ... he was leaning over her chair, and gazing away into the southern distance where Boarzell lay against the sky, all patched with heather and thorns, all golden with gorse, unirrigated, uncultivated, without furrow or fence.... ... A shudder passed through Reuben, a long shudder of his flesh, for in at the open window had drifted the scent of the gorse on Boarzell. It came on no wind, the night was windless as before. It just seemed to creep to him over the fields, to hang on the air like a reproach. It was the scent of peaches and apricots, of sunshine caught and distilled. He leaned forward out of the window, and thought he could see the glimmer of the gorse-clumps under the stars. The edge of Boarzell was outlined black against the faintly paler sky--he traced it from the woods in which it rose, up to its crest of firs, then down into the woods again. Once more it lay between him and the soft desires of his weakness; as long ago at Cheat Land, it called him back to his allegiance like a love forsaken. In the black quiet it lay hullish like some beast--but it was more than a beast to-night. It was like the gorse on its heights, delicate perfume as well as murderous fibre, sweetness as well as ferocity. The scent, impregnating the motionless air, seemed to remind him that Boarzell was his love as well as his enemy--more, far more to him than Alice.