It became difficult for the Shelleys to remain in his neighbourhood. Not that there was any coldness between the two men, for while Shelley had found the negotiations for Claire painful, they had seemed to him perfectly natural. But Claire herself suffered, and Mary was often indignant at Byron’s cynical talk. When he declared that women had no right to eat at the same table with men, that their proper place was in the harem or gynæceum, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft trembled with anger. Once more she was homesick for English scenes. A house beside some English river now appeared to her, at this distance away, a haven of peace. Shelley wrote to his friends, Peacock and Hogg, to find something for them, and the journey home began. * * * After they had gone, Byron wrote to his sister: “Now don’t scold; but what could I do? A foolish girl, in spite of all I could say or do, would come after me, or rather went before—for I found her here—and I had all the plague possible to persuade her to go back again, but at last she went. Now, dearest, I do most truly tell thee that I could not help this, that I did all I could to prevent it. I was not in love nor have any love left for any; but I could not exactly play the Stoic with a woman, who had scrambled eight hundred miles to unphilosophize me. . . . And now you know all that I know of the matter, and it’s over.” Shelley remained in correspondence with Byron and did not give up hopes of “saving” him. Mingled with an immense deference for the great poet, Shelley’s letters show a trace of haughty disapproval of the character of the man. He opposed to Byron’s constant anxiety concerning his reputation, his success, and what was said of him in London, a picture of true glory. “Is it nothing to create greatness and goodness, destined perhaps to infinite extensions? Is it nothing to become a source whence the minds of other men will draw strength and beauty? . . . What would Humanity be if Homer and Shakespeare had never written? . . . Not that I advise you to aspire to Fame. Your work should spring from a purer, simpler source. You should desire nothing more than to express your own thoughts, and to address yourself to the sympathy of those who are capable of thinking as you do. Fame follows those whom she is unworthy to guide.” Lord Byron, who was then on his way to Venice, read these lofty counsels with a weary indifference. Exacting veneration bored him. CHAPTER XXIV GRAVES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE