its clear, condensed style, appropriate to such a
treatise. It passed through several editions and increased his
reputation. His business in France is not very explicitly explained. His
headquarters seem to have been at Havre, while he had certain commercial
relations with Norway and Sweden. He was most probably in the timber
business, and was, at least at this period, successful. Godwin says that
he had no property whatever, but his speculations apparently brought him
plenty of ready money.

Foreigners in Paris, especially Americans and English, were naturally
drawn together. Mary and Imlay had mutual acquaintances, and they saw
much of each other. His republican sentiments alone would have appealed
to her. But the better she learned to know him, the more she liked him
personally. He, on his side, was equally attracted, and his kindness and
consideration for her were greatly in his favor. Their affection in the
end developed into a feeling stronger than mere friendship. Its
consequence, since both were free, would under ordinary circumstances
have been marriage.

But her circumstances just then were extraordinary. Godwin says that she
objected to a marriage with Imlay because she did not wish to "involve
him in certain family embarrassments to which she conceived herself
exposed, or make him answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed
against her." There were, however, more formidable objections, not of her
own making. The English who remained in Paris ran the chance from day to
day of being arrested with the priests and aristocrats, and even of being
carried to the guillotine. Their only safeguard lay in obscurity. They
had above all else to evade the notice of government officers. Mary, if
she married Imlay, would be obliged to proclaim herself a British
subject, and would thus be risking imprisonment and perhaps death.
Besides, it was very doubtful whether a marriage ceremony performed by
the French authorities would be recognized in England as valid. Had she
been willing to pass through this perilous ordeal she would have gained
nothing. Love's labor would indeed have been lost. Marriage was thus out
of the question.

To Mary, however, this did not seem an insurmountable obstacle to their
union. "Her view had now become," Kegan Paul says, "that mutual affection
was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death
of love, if love should die." In her "Vindication," she had upheld the
san