Her position as a nominal wife must have been most uncomfortable, but there is no indication of any effort on her part to alter it, until the Civil War was virtually terminated by the Battle of Naseby, June, 1645.

Obstinate malignants had then nothing to expect but fine and forfeiture, and their son-in-law's Puritanism may have presented itself to the Powells in the light of a merciful dispensation.

Rumours of Milton's suit to Miss Davis may also have reached them; and they would know that an illegal tie would be as fatal to all hopes of reconciliation as a legal one.

So, one day in July or August, 1645, Milton, paying his usual call on a kinsman named Blackborough,[3] not otherwise mentioned in his life, who lived in St.
Martin's-le-Grand Lane, where the General Post Office now stands, "was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." There are two similar scenes in his writings, of which this may have formed the groundwork, Dalila's visit to her betrayed husband in "Samson Agonistes," and Eve's repentance in the tenth book of "Paradise Lost." Samson replies, "Out, out, hyaena!" Eve's "lowly plight" "in Adam wrought Commiseration;...
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon." Phillips appears to intimate that the penitent's reception began like Dalila's and ended like Eve's.

"He might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the future." With a man of his magnanimous temper, conscious no doubt that he had himself been far from blameless, such a result was to be expected.