fter exertion by the horrible scenes to which, as a thing of
course, I should have been exposed.... I cannot bear some words. In my
actual state of physical weakness, it would have been the sacrifice of my
whole life--of my convictions, of my affections, and, above all, of what
the person dearest to me persisted in calling his life, and the good of
it--if I had observed that 'form.' Therefore I determined not to observe
it, and I consider that in not doing so, I sinned against no duty. That I
was _constrained_ to act clandestinely, and did not _choose_ to do so, God
is my witness. Also, up to the very last, we stood in the light of day for
the whole world, if it please, to judge us. I never saw him out of the
Wimpole Street house. He came twice a week to see me, openly in the sight
of all."

In no act of her life did Mrs. Browning more impressively reveal her good
sense than in this of her marriage. "I had long believed such an act," she
said, "the most strictly personal of one's life,--to be within the rights
of every person of mature age, man or woman, and I had resolved to
exercise that right in my own case by a resolution which had slowly
ripened. All the other doors of life were shut to me, and shut me as in a
prison, and only before this door stood one whom I loved best and who
loved me best, and who invited me out through it for the good's sake he
thought I could do him."... To a friend she explained her long refusal to
consent to the marriage, fearing that her delicate health would make it
"ungenerous" in her to yield to his entreaty; but he replied that

"he would not tease me, he would wait twenty years if I pleased, and
then, if life lasted so long for both of us, then, when it was ending,
perhaps, I might understand him and feel that I might have trusted
him.... He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate choice, to be
allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the fulfillment of
the brightest dream which should exclude me, in any possible world."

She continues:

"I tell you so much that you may see the manner of man I had to do
with, and the sort of attachment which for nearly two years has been
drawing and winning me. I know better than any in the world, indeed,
what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said before me, that 'Robert
Browning is great in every thing.'... Now may I not tell you that his
genius, and all but miraculous attainments, are the lea