His ambition flared up like a damped furnace, and he suddenly saw himself a coward ever to have thought of rest. Boarzell was more to him than any woman in the world. For the sake of one weak woman he was not going to sacrifice all his hopes and dreams and enterprises, the great love of his life. Boarzell, not Alice, should be his. He muttered the words aloud as he strained his eyes into the darkness, tracing the beloved outline. He despised himself for having wavered even in thought. Through blood and tears--others' and his own--he would wade to Boarzell, and conquer it at last. From that night all would be changed, the past should be thrust behind him, he would pull himself together, make himself a man. Alice must go where everything else had gone--mother, wife, children, friends, and love. Thank God! Boarzell was worth more to him than all these. Leaning out of the window, he breathed in the scent of his slumbering land. His lips parted, his eyes brightened, the lines of care and age grew softer on his face. With his darling ambition, he seemed to recover his youth--once more he felt the blood glowing in his veins, while zeal and adventure throbbed together in his heart. He had conquered the softer mood, and banished the sweet unworthy, dreams for ever. Alice--who had nearly vanquished him--should go the way of all enemies. _And the last enemy to be destroyed is Love._ BOOK VI STRUGGLING UP § 1. That night was a purging. From thenceforward Reuben was to press on straight to his goal, with no more slackenings or diversions. He had learned one sound lesson, which was the superfluousness of women in the scheme of life. From henceforward he was "shut of" them. Long ago he had denied himself women in their more casual aspect, using them entirely for practical purposes, but now he realised that women no longer had any practical purpose as far as he was concerned. The usefulness of woman was grossly overrated. It is true that she produced offspring, but he thought irritably that Providence might have found some more satisfactory way of perpetuating the human race. Everything a woman did was bound to go wrong somehow. She was nothing but a parasite and an incubus, a blood-sucking triviality, an expense and a snare. So he tore woman out of his life as he tore up the gorse on Boarzell. It was wonderful how soon he adapted himself to his new conditions. At first he missed Rose, but by the time he had got rid of her clothes and swept the perfume of her out of his room, he had ceased to hunger. He never heard of her again--he never knew what life she led in the new land, whether the reality of love brought her as much happiness as the game, or whether her old taste for luxury and pleasure reasserted itself and ruined both love and lover.