nature that to be once
in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her
husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in
retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed
the change of scene."

"Perhaps" she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and
complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at
all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went before the
altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each
other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation
itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet went away, and
the sister-in-law removed herself from her society. That was in April.
Shelley wrote his "appeal" in May, but the corresponding went right along
afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a
"reconciliation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to be
reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade her to it--as the
biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of
conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry. For we have
"evidence" now--not poetry and conjecture. When Shelley had been dining
daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the
love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier,
he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the next. During
four days Harriet got no letter from him. Then her fright and anxiety
rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley's publisher
which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her had been the
customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no
appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to:

"BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).
"MY DEAR SIR,--You will greatly oblige me by giving the
enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, but it is
now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an
age. Will you write by return of post and tell me what has
become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has
happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is
well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you
or him I