Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman—­so sure, so vital, so tender and yet so strong!

He would love her back to life and light!

And so Robert Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he told, she had divined his thought.  For solitude and loneliness and heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether.  He would love her back to life and light—­he told her so.  She grew better.

And soon we find her getting up and throwing wide the shutters.  It was no longer the darkened room, for the sunlight came dancing through the apartment, driving out all the dark shadows that lurked therein.

The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.

Of course, Mr. Barrett was not taken into confidence and no one asked his consent.  Why should they?—­he was the man who could never understand.

So one fine day when the coast was clear, the couple went over to Saint Marylebone Church and were married.  The bride went home alone—­could walk all right now—­and it was a week before her husband saw her, because he would not be a hypocrite and go ring the doorbell and ask if Miss Barrett was home; and of course if he had asked for Mrs. Robert Browning, no one would have known whom he wanted to see.

But at the end of a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time, with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark.  I have oft wondered in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have been, had the dog really barked!  But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is.  No one 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.