And now it seems to me that somewhere in these pages I said that
friendship was essentially hygienic. I wish to make that remark again, and
to put it in italics. The Divine Passion implies the most exalted form of
friendship that man can imagine.

Elizabeth Barrett ran up the shades and flung open the shutters. The
sunlight came dancing through the apartment, flooding each dark corner and
driving out all the shadows that lurked therein. It was no longer a
darkened room.

The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.

Miss Mitford wrote back to the country that Miss Barrett was "really
looking better than she had for years."

As for poor Edward Moulton Barrett--he raved. He tried to quarrel with
Robert Browning, and had there been only a callow youth with whom to deal,
Browning would simply have been kicked down the steps, and that would have
been an end of it. But Browning had an even pulse, a calm eye and a temper
that was imperturbable. His will was quite as strong as Mr. Barrett's.

And so it was just a plain runaway match--the ideal thing after all. One
day when the father was out of the way they took a cab to Marylebone
Parish Church and were married. The bride went home alone, and it was a
week before her husband saw her; because he would not be a hypocrite and
go ask for her by her maiden name. And had he gone, rung the bell and
asked to see Elizabeth Barrett Browning, no one would have known whom he
wanted. At the end of the week, the bride stole down the steps alone,
leading her dog Flush by a string, and met her lover-husband on the
corner. Next day, they wrote back from Calais, asking forgiveness and