Small wonder that he snuffed prodigiously that night. He had his meed of suffering, and overcharged his small account with dreadful self-reproach. He, not Ada, and not Sam, was responsible for her violence and for the cause of it; he and the books upon his shelves; reading, his darling sin. He blamed himself for consenting too readily to their marriage. Sam, he had thought, would lead Ada: on what grounds had he thought it? What had he known of Sam’s leadership--a prolix, fluent boy at the Concentrics? He had exchanged his daughter for peaceful, solitary evenings with his books--“Self-seeker!” he thought--and the exchange was to recoil upon him now. He had abandoned, after one harsh, undaughterly repulse, his attempt to show her that wearing a wedding ring was not the whole duty of woman--“The sin of Pride,” he thought--and had returned to browse amongst his books. Sam seemed a good fellow, too. There were those Classics, and the texts, and the prosperous old age of Mr. Carter, who, but for Sam, would certainly have ended his days in the workhouse. But, failing with Ada, he ought to have appealed to Sam.... Yes, he ought to have taken a strong line with Sam, instead of letting Sam’s worldly success dazzle him. Sam had seemed too big for Peter Struggles to grapple with--the sin of cowardice. Now it had come to this! Sam had broken the seventh commandment, and Ada wished to forget the words which Peter had read over them when he joined their right hands together, and said, “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” She commanded a divorce, and it was useless for Peter to insist, out of his small store of worldly wisdom, that divorce was not hers to command. Sam had not been “cruel.” Her fury only doubled. Gone, vanished like the snows of long ago, was her painted idyll of domestic bliss. “Cruel?” she said. “He’s never been anything but cruel. I’m black and blue with his atrocities.” Very gently he tried to tell her that he did not believe it. “We must not exaggerate,” he said. “Exaggerate!” she blazed. “Won’t you believe me till you see it? I’ll go upstairs and strip. Come when I call.” He soothed her down at that, seeing that she was capable of doing herself some signal injury to call in evidence. “Well, then,” she said, “I want my divorce: get me a divorce.” That was her simple demand of the priest who married her: it was why Peter took, unrepentantly, as much snuff in a night as he commonly took in a week, and why, with replenished stock, he continued next day to take snuff with a lavish hand. It irritated Ada, though she had always associated Peter with a snuff-box, and the untidiness of the habit could not offend her, who was never offended by dirt, as any mechanical movement in another will irritate one whose nerves are ill-controlled. They had talked themselves to a standstill, and sat in moody silence, broken only by the deplorable sound of taking snuff.