Indeed, it is improbable that any really good woman would ever so far forget herself as to lose her temper, if she were once thoroughly aware how much more irritating in the long-run a judicious course of those small persecutions may be made, which the tenderest conscience need not scruple to inflict.
Charles was unreasonably annoyed at having Molly taken from him.

As he sat by the fire alone, tired in mind and body, a hovering sense of cold, and an intense weariness of life took him; and a great longing came over him like a thirst--a longing for a little of the personal happiness which seemed to be the common lot of so many round him; for a home where he had now only a house; for love and warmth and companionship, and possibly some day a little Molly of his own, who would not be taken from him at the caprice of another.
The only barrier to the fulfilment of such a dream had been a conscientious scruple of Ruth's, to which at the time he had urged upon her that she did wrong to yield.

That barrier was now broken down; but it ought never to have existed.

Ruth and he belonged to each other by divine law, and she had no right to give herself to any one else to satisfy her own conscience.

And now--all would be well.