Harriet sighed. “He’s a nice sort of friend!” said she, in a tone heavy with insinuations.
Shelley, astonished, urged her to explain.
She told the story. “He has made love to me . . . twice. The first time he told me he was passionately in love with me. . . . I pretended it was a joke. . . . I made him be quiet. I imagined it was all over, and I even had no intention of speaking to you about it. But yesterday he began again. He declared he couldn’t live without me, and that he will kill himself if I don’t consent.”
Shelley felt his blood freeze. His heart seemed to stand still.
“Hogg? Hogg did this? But did you not point out to him . . .?”
“Oh, I said everything I could say . . . that he was a false friend, that he was betraying your confidence. . . . ‘What does all that matter when one is in love?’ he replied. ‘It’s all right for Percy, who is a cold and pure spirit, to talk of virtue . . . but I’m in love with you, and the rest doesn’t count. . . . Besides, what harm should we do Shelley? He need never know. Why not give me your love, and give him your affection? Does he think so much about you?’ ”
“He said that?”
“Yes, and lots of other things as well. He said you mix logic with things where it has no business, that you are a flame for ideas, and ice for the sentiments which alone count in life. . . . I answered him as well as I was able. . . .”
Shelley let himself fall upon the sofa. Suddenly the world seemed eclipsed behind a veil of grey. He was seized with giddiness, his head swam, he shivered with cold.
“That Hogg should have tried to seduce my wife, taking advantage of the moment that I had confided her to his protection . . . Hogg, on whose countenance I have sometimes gazed till I fancied the world could be reformed by gazing too. . . . Never was there a more shameful attempt. . . . And yet when I think of Oxford, of his nobility and disinterestedness. . . . I must talk with him, I must make him see reason. . . .”