"Our dinners therefore were constructive, a dumb show, a mere empty idle ceremony; our only resource against absolute starvation was tea. Penny-buns were our assured resource. The survivors of those days of peril and hardship are indebted for their existence to the humane interposition and succor of penny-buns. A shilling's worth of penny-buns for tea. If the purchase was intrusted to the maid, she got such buns as none could believe to have been made on earth, proving thereby incontestably that the girl had some direct communication with the infernal regions, where they alone could have been procured." The married life was on the whole, when not a roaring farce, almost a tragedy. Harriet's sister was, like the poor, always with them. Shelley grew to hate her, and tried in every way to be delivered from her presence, but in vain. Harriet would not live without her, and paid little attention to anybody else when she was present. Two children were born to them, but even the children Shelley was not permitted to enjoy without the constant supervision of Eliza. He became nearly frantic from the constant annoyance, and finally a separation came about between the ill-mated pair. The women themselves became tired of the moping and inefficient youth, who still remained poor and unsettled, with a father desperately healthy and inexorable. They grew tired and went away,--the wife, like Lady Byron, refusing to go back to such an aimless, rhapsodizing husband. And in truth, the hardship of living with such a man as Shelley, for a woman like Harriet, must have been very great. It is easy to understand how a limited nature like hers should be worn out by the exaction and impracticability of one like Shelley; for to her, most impracticable would seem his lofty and ideal requirements. The parting was not unfriendly, and Shelley always spoke of her with deep kindness and pity, and she continued to write to him for some time after he had formed his connection with Mary Godwin, of which she did not seem to disapprove. He had found a sort of comfort in his intercourse with Mary from his first acquaintance with her, and she was probably the first woman he had ever known who in any way understood or appreciated him. Some lines have been given in the "Relics," written to her at this time, which run thus:-- "Upon my heart thy accents sweet Of peace and pity fell like dew On flowers half-dead. . . . "We are not happy, sweet! our state Is strange and full of doubt and fear; More need of words that ills abate;-- Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thee or me."