duce him to follow her,
perhaps in a more obedient spirit. She sought refuge in her father's
house, where she might have expected kindness; but, as the old man
bent towards the grave, with rapid loss of faculties, he became more
severe in his treatment of the poor woman; and she was driven from the
paternal roof. This Shelley did not know at the time; nor did he until
afterwards learn the process by which she arrived at her fate.
Too late she became aware how fatal to her interests had been the
intrigues of which she had been the passive instrument; and I suspect
that she was debarred from seeking forgiveness and help partly by
false shame, and partly by the terrible adaptability of weak natures
to the condition of the society in which they find themselves. I have
said that there is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal
against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley, and I have
indicated the most probable motives of that step; but subsequently she
forfeited her claim to a return, even in the eye of the law. Shelley
had information which made him believe that she fell even to the depth
of actual prostitution. If she left him, it would appear that she
herself was deserted in turn by a man in a very humble grade of life;
and it was in consequence of this desertion that she killed herself.

The change in his personal aspect that showed itself at Marlow
appeared also in his writings,--the most typical of his works for this
period being naturally the most complete that issued from his pen, the
"Revolt of Islam." We find there identically the same doctrine that
there is in "Queen Mab,"--a systematic abhorrence of the servility
which renders man captive to power, denunciation of the love of gain
which blinds his insight and destroys his energy, of the prostitution
of religious faith, and, above all, of the slavery of womanhood. But
by this time the doctrine has more distinct in its expression, and far
more powerful in its utterance.

"Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave
A lasting chain for his own slavery;
In fear and restless care that he may live,
He toils for others, who must ever be
The joyless thralls of like captivity;
He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;
He builds the altar, that its idol's fee
May be his very blood; he is pursuing,
O blind and willing wretch! his own obscure undoing.

"Woman!--she is his slave, she has become
A thing I weep to speak,--the