s than four times between Havre
and Paris.

This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay had
removed to Havre, was represented as an absence that was to have a
short duration. In two months he was once again to join her at Paris. It
proved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of such
a separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found them
upon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering method
in which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hung
upon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, by
force, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and not
suffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy and
elasticity of her character.

The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one
advantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities
that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional
three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very
dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than
dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was
wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is
continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiring
hope.

Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion?
Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate
itself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment,
without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is
capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this
chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit
to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has
fixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourable
opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly fought for a kindred mind,
in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay undertook
to prove, in his letters written immediately after their complete
separation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to the
strictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion.
Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentiment
that, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for the
mistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a friendship and
attachme