In the drama of ‘Cain,’ Adah, the sister and the wife of Cain, thus addresses him:—­

      ’Cain, walk not with this spirit. 
   Bear with what we have borne, and love me:  I
   Love thee.

   Lucifer.  More than thy mother and thy sire?

   Adah.  I do.  Is that a sin, too?

   Lucifer.  No, not yet: 
   It one day will be in your children.

   Adah.  What! 
   Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?

   Lucifer.  Not as thou lovest Cain.

   Adah.  O my God! 
   Shall they not love, and bring forth things that love
   Out of their love?  Have they not drawn their milk
   Out of this bosom?  Was not he, their father,
   Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour
   With me?  Did we not love each other, and,
   In multiplying our being, multiply
   Things which will love each other as we love
   Them?  And as I love thee, my Cain, go not
   Forth with this spirit:  he is not of ours.

   Lucifer.  The sin I speak of is not of my making
   And cannot be a sin in you, whate’er
   It seems in those who will replace ye in
   Mortality.

   Adah.  What is the sin which is not
   Sin in itself?  Can circumstance make sin
   Of virtue?  If it doth, we are the slaves
   Of’—­

Lady Byron, though slight and almost infantine in her bodily presence, had the soul, not only of an angelic woman, but of a strong reasoning man.  It was the writer’s lot to know her at a period when she formed the personal acquaintance of many of the very first minds of England; but, among all with whom this experience brought her in connection, there was none who impressed her so strongly as Lady Byron.  There was an almost supernatural power of moral divination, a grasp of the very highest and most comprehensive things, that made her lightest opinions singularly impressive.  No doubt, this result was wrought out in a great degree from the anguish and conflict of these two years, when, with no one to help or counsel her but Almighty God, she wrestled and struggled with fiends of darkness for the redemption of her husband’s soul.

She followed him through all his sophistical reasonings with a keener reason.  She besought and implored, in the name of his better nature, and by all the glorious things that he was capable of being and doing; and she had just power enough to convulse and shake and agonise, but not power enough to subdue.