ives
to a woman is the greatest good in life. That she was without it had been
to her a heavier trial than an unhappy home and overwhelming debts. Now,
when she least expected it, it had come to her. While women in Paris were
either trembling with fear for what the morrow might bring forth, or else
caught in the feverish whirl of rebellion, one at least had found rest.
But human happiness can never be quite perfect. Sensitiveness was a
family fault with the Wollstonecrafts. It had been developed rather than
suppressed in Mary by her circumstances. She was therefore keenly
susceptible not only to Imlay's love, but to his failings. Of these he
had not a few. He does not seem to have been a refined man. From some
remarks in Mary's letters it may be concluded that he had at one time
been very dissipated, and that the society of coarse men and women had
blunted his finer instincts. His faults were peculiarly calculated to
offend her. His passion had to be stimulated. His business called him
away often, and his absences were unmistakably necessary to the
maintenance of his devotion. The sunshine of her new life was therefore
not entirely unclouded. She was by degrees obliged to lower the high
pedestal on which she had placed her lover, and to admit to herself that
he was not much above the level of ordinary men. This discovery did not
lessen her affection, though it made her occasionally melancholy. But she
was, on the whole, happy.

In September he was compelled to leave her to go to Havre, where he was
detained for several months. Love had cast out all fear from her heart.
She was certain that he considered himself in every sense of the word her
husband; and therefore during his absence she frankly told him how much
she missed him, and in her letters shared her troubles and pleasures with
him. She wrote the last thing at night to tell him of her love and her
loneliness. She could not take his slippers from their old place by the
door. She would not look at a package of books sent to her, but said she
would keep them until he could read them to her while she would mend her
stockings. She drew pictures of the happy days to come when in the farm,
either in America or France, to which they both looked forward as their
_Ultima Thule_, they would spend long evenings by their fireside, perhaps
with children about their knees. If Eliza sent her a worrying letter,
half the worry was gone when she had confided it to him. If ne'er-do-w