‘By the kiss of love, the glance none saw beside, The smile none else might understand, The whispered thought of hearts allied, The pressure of the thrilling hand.’ “I have pledged myself to thee and sacred is the gift.” Meanwhile, these glances and smiles that none might see nor understand, had been seen and perfectly understood by Godwin. The intrigue of his daughter with a married man troubled him. He pointed out the danger to her, and wrote to Shelley in the same strain. He advised him to make things up with his wife: and he begged him to discontinue, for the present, his visits to Skinner Street. The prohibition, kindly as it was, simply hastened on events, which, without it, might have tarried. Shelley, passionately in love with Mary and deprived of her society, determined to take a decisive step. He felt no remorse on Harriet’s account, for he persisted in thinking her guilty, in spite of the assertions of Peacock and Hogg, both impartial witnesses. “There’s just one thing only she cares about,” he thought, “and that is money. I’ll provide for her future, and then she’ll be glad to be free.” Accordingly he wrote to her begging her to come to London. She came; she was four months gone with child, and very unwell. When, calmly and kindly, Percy told her he was going to live without her and elope with some one else, but that he would always remain her best friend, the shock brought on an alarming illness. Shelley nursed her with devotion, which made her more unhappy still, and the moment she was better he resumed his inflexible arguments. “The union of the sexes is sacred only so long as it contributes to the happiness of husband and wife, and it is dissolved automatically from the moment that its evils exceed its benefits. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, on the contrary it is often vicious, leading one to condone the gravest faults in the object of one’s choice.” When he wove round her these diaphanous but insuperable webs, Harriet knew she was lost, just as formerly when she had tried to defend her religious beliefs against him she had seen herself overwhelmed on every side. She knew that some answer _must_ exist; that so much anguish and sorrow and horror should find some expression, and might have found it had her mind been clearer; as it was she never knew what she ought to say. She dreamed she was struggling to free herself from invisible bonds. Her one relief was in terrible outbursts of rage against Mary. It was she who was the cause of all, she who had separated Percy from his wife, taking advantage of his romantic tendencies to entice him to meet her at a grave-side, which was just the kind of thing that would appeal to him. She had made a shameful use of her mother’s memory.