Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/202

186 his emotions were stirred, and he really loved. He was more awed by his passion than a more susceptible man would have been. It seemed to him too sacred to flaunt before the public. "Nothing can be so ridiculous upon the face of it," he says in the story of their love, "or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment when it has arrived at its climax." Mary was anxious to conceal, at least for a time, their new relationship. She was not ashamed of it, for never, even when her actions seem most daring, did she swerve from her ideas of right and wrong. But though, as a rule, people had blinded themselves to the truth, some bitter things had been said about her life with Imlay, and some friends had found it their duty to be unkind. All that was unpleasant she had of course heard. One is always sure to hear the evil spoken of one. A second offence against social decrees would assuredly call forth redoubled discussion and increased vituperation. 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.

The great change in their relations made little difference in their way of living. Their determination to keep it a 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