"I think there never was another marriage like that; a marriage that made two poet souls one forever. Don't you notice how Browning always speaks of finding again the 'soul of his soul'? It was easy enough to see that that was just what she was. And the boy was there, too, a little fellow, with long golden hair, and I remember how quietly he used to play, how careful he was not to disturb his mother. Sometimes he used to stand for a long time beside her, with her 'spirit-small hand,' as her husband called it, just playing with his curls. I wonder if he can have known that she was going away from him so soon."
From various letters of this time of and to Mrs. Moulton may be taken such bits as these:
Mrs. Moulton to Elihu Vedder
"It was such a pleasure to me in my present loneliness to have a good talk with you last night, and I have been thinking of what you said. You would like a big fortune that you might have leisure to fulfil your dreams, but what if you had the fortune and not the dreams? I would a million times rather be you than any capitalist alive. It seems to me that to do work as the few great men in the world have, that must live, is the supreme joy. When you are dust the world will adore the wonder and majesty and beauty of your pictures. It seems to me that I would starve willingly in an attic, like Chatterton, to leave to the wide future one such legacy."
Walter Pater to Mrs. Moulton
"I read very little contemporary poetry, finding a good deal of it a little falsetto. I found, however, in your elegant and musical volume a sincerity, a simplicity, which stand you as constituting a cachet, a distinct note."