Here there may be partly the feeling of the literary man for the sacredness of the uttered word, but there is far more of a certain rooted traditional morality which it is impossible either to describe or to justify.

Browning's respectability was an older and more primeval thing than the oldest and most primeval passions of other men.

If we wish to understand him, we must always remember that in dealing with any of his actions we have not to ask whether the action contains the highest morality, but whether we should have felt inclined to do it ourselves.
At length the equivocal and exhausting interregnum was over.

Mrs.
Browning went for the second time almost on tiptoe out of her father's house, accompanied only by her maid and her dog, which was only just successfully prevented from barking.

Before the end of the day in all probability Barrett had discovered that his dying daughter had fled with Browning to Italy.
They never saw him again, and hardly more than a faint echo came to them of the domestic earthquake which they left behind them.