ion. The misery caused by her late experience was still vivid in
her memory. She was no less sensitive than she had been then, and she
shrank from a second scandal. She dreaded the world's harshness, much as
a Tennyson might that of critics whom he knows to be immeasurably his
inferiors.

The great change in their relations made little difference in their way
of living. Their determination to keep it secret would have been
sufficient to prevent any domestic innovations in the establishment of
either. But, in addition to this, Godwin had certain theories upon the
subject. Because his love was the outcome of strong feeling and not of
calm discussion, his reliance upon reason, as the regulator of his
actions, did not cease. The habits of a life-time could not be so easily
broken. If he had not governed love in its growth, he at least ruled its
expression. It was necessary to decide upon a course of conduct for the
two lives now made one. At this juncture he was again the placid
philosopher. It had occurred to him, probably in the days when Hannah
Godwin was wife-hunting for him, or later, when Amelia Alderson met with
his good-will, that if husband and wife live on too intimate and familiar
terms, the chances are they will tire of each other very soon. When the
charm of novelty and uncertainty is removed, there is danger of satiety.
Whereas, if domestic pleasures can be combined with a little of the
formality which exists previous to marriage, all the advantages of the
married state are secured, while the monotony that too often kills
passion is avoided. Since he and Mary were to be really, if not legally,
man and wife, the time had come to test the truth of these ideas. The
plan he proposed was that they should be as independent of each other as
they had hitherto been, that the time spent together should not in any
way be restricted or regulated by stated hours, and that, in their
amusements and social intercourse, each should continue wholly free.

Mary readily acquiesced, though such a suggestion would probably never
have originated with her. Her heart was too large and warm for doubts,
where love was concerned. She was the very opposite of Godwin in this
respect. She had the poetic rather than the philosophic temperament, and
when she loved it was with an intensity that made analysis of her
feelings and their possible results out of the question. It is true that
in her "Rights of Women" she had shown that passion must