Here, however, it was different. Theodore Cram did not bleed at her sneers, nor lie transfixed with her angry words. Theodore Cram could cut back and shoot back. And tears came more readily in Rhoda’s eyes than the flash of pain on her husband’s mouth. Rhoda had her match. And in the poise of this even combat, Quincy learned its pettiness and sordidness. From this conclusion, came the inevitable step: that her warfare of old must have been similarly petty, and that the woman who waged such, with such incessance, must be of a measure with her battles. The boy’s brain receded before it would take on this lesson. Was Rhoda narrow and petty and mean of spirit? Had her cause of battle against them all been sordid? and her victims, the result not of her own excellence but of their own mediocrity? Here were two strong and striking observations to make lie together: that in their marital irritations, Rhoda was no more generous or ideal than her hard-hearted husband--and that, in her appearance and her charm, Rhoda was as enfevering and inspiring as ever. Could these two knowledges couple and give birth to strength in Quincy? At least the struggle of conception and the ensuing labor were painful interludes. A woman, then, could be beautiful, dominant, entrancing, yet have a soul of flint? a woman could hold one, yet by qualities that one despised? a woman could forge sovereignty at home, yet abdicate to the level of those she ruled at her maturity? What was this creature, woman? And how came it that he, Quincy, full with his eighteen years, could compute and reckon his superiority all of a forenoon in the woods, yet be a mute, inglorious thing before her glance, at lunch? In Theodore Cram there was no longer any glamor. The man was without vision or ideals or beauty. Yet Rhoda loved him! gave herself to him! And an hour after those dark mystic hours they must have spent together, she could despise him or ignore him--he could despise her or ignore her! Was there not this ugly identity between them? And then how, viewing her husband’s pettiness, could Rhoda be deemed better? How, with these things established, could she still have power and charm for Quincy? It had sufficed merely to glimpse them to cause Theodore Cram to lose his glamor. Oh! the perplexities were myriad and infinitely intertwining. Perhaps he might have solved--or at least met them--had they led no farther than these two. But irrevocably, the perplexities flowed out to Julia Deering, to his mother, to himself. Until the whole whirled like a dizzy dream, where arms, outstretched for a firm hold, turned into gyres and spun along.