Most women would have been discouraged by such a series of repulses; but Miss Clairmont was not. In response to a communication in which Byron had begged her to "write short," she wrote: "I do not expect you to love me; I am not worthy of your love." But she begged him, if he could not love, at least to let himself be loved--to suffer her to demonstrate that she, on her part, could "love gently and with affection"; and thus she paved the way to a practical proposal: "Have you, then," (she asked) "any objection to the following plan? On Thursday Evening we may go out of town together by some stage of mail about the distance of ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and unknown; we can return early the following morning. I have arranged everything here so that the slightest suspicion may not be excited. Pray do so with your people." Even to that appeal Byron seems to have turned a deaf ear. One infers as much from the fact that other appeals followed it: "Do not delay our meeting after Saturday--I cannot endure the suspense," &c. After that, however, and apparently quite soon after it, followed the capitulation; and for the sequel we will turn again to Mr. Graham's report of Miss Clairmont's confessions: "He was making his final arrangements for leaving England, when I told him of the project the Shelleys and I had formed of the journey to Geneva. He at once suggested that we should all meet at Geneva, and delightedly fell in with my proposal to accompany me one day when I had arranged to visit the Shelleys at Marlow,[10] where they were then stopping, and arrange matters. We started early one morning, and we arrived at Marlow about the mid-day dinner-hour.... Byron refreshed himself with a huge mug of beer.... A few minutes afterwards in came Shelley and Mary. It was such a merry party that we made at lunch in the inn parlour: Byron, despite his misfortunes, was in the spirits of a boy at leaving England, and Shelley was overjoyed at meeting his idolised poet, who had actually come all the way from London to see him." Such are the facts, so far as they are ascertainable, concerning the origin of this curious _liaison_. It is a story which begins, and goes on for some time, though it does not conclude, like the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; and Miss Clairmont recalls how exultantly she proclaimed her triumph. "Percy! Mary! What do you think? The great Lord Byron loves me!" she exclaimed, bursting in upon her friends; and she adds that Shelley regarded the attachment as right and natural and proper, and a proof that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.