Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/60

 MARK TWAIN

Street with Shelley on that 8th of June. They passed through Godwin s little debt-factory of a book-shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor. No body there. Shelley strode about the room im patiently, making its crazy floor quake under him. Then a door &quot;was partially and softly opened. A thrilling voice called, Shelley! A thrilling voice answered, Mary! And he darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him out of the room.&quot;

This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg. The thrill of the voices shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a fortnight old; there fore it had been born within the month of May born while Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think. I must not be asked how I know so much about that thrill; it is my secret. The biographer and I have private ways of finding out things when it is necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail.

Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days. The biographer conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It would be just like him. j To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two women at once. He was more in love with Miss Kitchener when he married Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with sim ple and unostentatious candor. He was more in love with Cornelia than he was with Harriet in the

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