missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were
safely in France, writing letters back from Dieppe, asking forgiveness and
craving blessings.

* * * * *

"She is the Genius and I am the Clever Person," Browning used to say. And
this I believe will be the world's final judgment.

Browning knew the world in its every phase--good and bad, high and low,
society and commerce, the shop and gypsy camp. He absorbed things,
assimilated them, compared and wrote it out.

Elizabeth Barrett had never traveled, her opportunities for meeting people
had been few, her experiences limited, and yet she evolved truth: she
secreted beauty from within.

For two years after their elopement they did not write--how could they?
goodness me! They were on their wedding-tour. They lived in Florence and
Rome and in various mountain villages in Italy.

Health came back, and joy and peace and perfect love were theirs. But it
was joy bought with a price--Elizabeth Barrett Browning had forfeited the
love of her father. Her letters written him came back unopened, books
inscribed to him were returned--he declared she was dead.

Her brothers, too, discarded her, and when her two sisters wrote, they did
so by stealth, and their letters, meant to be kind, were steel for her
heart. Then her father was rich; and she had always known every comfort
that money could buy. Now, she had taken up with a poor poet, and every