The paradox of things found expression when Byron the impressionable, Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly acquainted, proposing marriage.  The lady very properly declined.  To be courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by a live man, deserves rebuke.  Men who propose by mail to a woman in the next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.

Byron was both insincere and self-deceived.  He had grown to distrust the emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head.  He chose a woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.  Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.

The lady declined—­but that is nothing.

They were married within a year.

In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother, carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.

She never returned to her husband.

What the trouble was no one ever knew, although the gossips named a hundred and one reasons—­running from drunkenness to homicide.  But Byron, the world now knows, was no drunkard—­he was at times convivial, but he had no fixed taste for strong drink.  He was, however, peevish, impulsive, impetuous and often very unreasonable.

Byron, be it said to his credit, brought no recriminating charges against his wife.  He only said their differences were inexplicable and unexplainable.

The simple facts were that they breathed a different atmosphere—­their heads were in a different stratum.  His normal pulse was eighty; hers, sixty-five.

What do you think of a spiritual companionship where the wife demands, “How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing verses?”

They did not understand each other.  Byron uttered words that no man should voice to a woman, and his outbursts were met with a forced calmness that was exasperating.  The lady sat down, yawned wearily, and when there came a lull in the gentleman’s verbal pyrotechnics, she would ask him if he had anything more to say.

One day she varied the program by packing up her effects and leaving him.

Of course, it is easy to say that had this woman been wise she would have stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow.  By right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly.  But all this implies a woman of unusual power—­extraordinary patience.  And this woman was simply human.  She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave reasons.  Our actions are usually right, but our reasons for them seldom are.