"Well, of course, if she has a thorough rest from all work and worry, and recovers her health in the meantime, I don't say that in three or four years.... But she's not a strong subject, Mr. Backfield, and you'd do well to remember it." § 12. Reuben was very kind to Naomi during her illness. He helped his mother to nurse her, and spent by her side all the time he could spare from the farm. He was too strong to vent on her personally the rage and disappointment with which circumstances had filled him. He pitied her fragility, he even pitied her for the antagonism which he saw she still felt towards him. At nights he slept upstairs in one of the attics, which always smelt of apples, because it was next to the loft where the apples were stored. He was happy there, in spite of some dark hours when the deadlock of his married life kept him awake. He wondered if there was a woman in the world who could share his ambitions for Odiam. He expected not, for women were an ambitionless race. If Naomi had had a single spark of zeal for the great enterprise in which he and she were engaged, she would not now be lying exhausted by her share in it. He had honoured her by asking her to join him in this splendid undertaking, and all she had done had been to prove that she had no fight in her. He could now gaze out on Boarzell uninterrupted. The sight of the great Moor made his blood tingle; his whole being thrilled to see it lying there, swart, unconquered, challenging. How long would it be, he wondered, before he had subdued it? Surely in all Sussex, in all England, there had never been such an undertaking as this ... and when he was triumphant, had achieved his great ambition, won his heart's desire, how proud, how glorious he would be among his children.... The wind would carry him the scent of gorse, like peaches and apricots. There was something in that scent which both mocked and delighted him. It was an irony that the huge couchant beast of Boarzell should smell so sweet--surely the wind should have brought him a pungent ammoniacal smell like the smell of stables ... or perhaps the smell of blood. But, after all, this subtle gorse-fragrance had its suitableness, for though gorse may cast out the scent of soft fruit from its flowers, its stalks are wire and its roots iron, its leaves are so many barbs for those who would lay hands on its sweetness. It was like Boarzell itself, which was Reuben's delight and his dread, his beloved and his enemy. The day would come when Boarzell would no longer drench the night with perfume, when the gorse would be torn out of its hide to make room for the scentless grain. Then Reuben would no longer lean out of his window and dream of it, for dreams, like the peach-scent of the gorse, would go when the corn came. But those days were not yet.