"I think there never was another marriage like that; a marriage that made two poet souls one forever. Don't you notice how Browning always speaks of finding again the 'soul of his soul'? It was easy enough to see that that was just what she was. And the boy was there, too, a little fellow, with long golden hair, and I remember how quietly he used to play, how careful he was not to disturb his mother. Sometimes he used to stand for a long time beside her, with her 'spirit-small hand,' as her husband called it, just playing with his curls. I wonder if he can have known that she was going away from him so soon." From various letters of this time of and to Mrs. Moulton may be taken such bits as these: _Mrs. Moulton to Elihu Vedder_ "It was such a pleasure to me in my present loneliness to have a good talk with you last night, and I have been thinking of what you said. You would like a big fortune that you might have leisure to fulfil your dreams, but what if you had the fortune and not the dreams? I would a million times rather be you than any capitalist alive. It seems to me that to do work as the few great men in the world have, that must live, is the supreme joy. When you are dust the world will adore the wonder and majesty and beauty of your pictures. It seems to me that I would starve willingly in an attic, like Chatterton, to leave to the wide future one such legacy." _Walter Pater to Mrs. Moulton_ "I read very little contemporary poetry, finding a good deal of it a little falsetto. I found, however, in your elegant and musical volume a sincerity, a simplicity, which stand you as constituting a _cachet_, a distinct note." _Mrs. Moulton to Lady Lindsay_ "I am reading, with very unusual interest, 'Blake of Oriel,' by Adeline Sargent. It is a story of fate and of heredity, which sets one thinking and questioning.... Is fate also to be complicated by the curse of evil inheritance? Oh, is it fair to give life to one with such an inheritance of evil, and then condemn the sinner for what he does? Is it?... Is it a loving God who creates men foreknowing that they will commit spiritual suicide?... Are people sinners who are doomed by heredity to sin?" _Arthur Christopher Benson to Mrs. Moulton_ "Thank you for what you say of my 'Arthur Hamilton.' It is deeply gratifying to me that the book has ever so slightly interested you. As for the difficulties of the hero, I suppose they are the eternal difficulties. It was like my impudent youth to think that to no one else had the same problem been so unjustly presented before, and to rush wildly into a tourney."