u; the rest lie by because I was
unwilling to give you pain, and I should not now write if I did not
think that there would be no conclusion to the schemes which
demand, as I am told, your presence."

Once, but only once, the light shone again. On the 15th of January she
received a kind letter from Imlay, and her anger died away. "It is
pleasant to forgive those we love," she said to him simply. But it was
followed by his usual hasty business notes or by complete silence, and
henceforward she knew hope only by name. Her old habit of seeing
everything from the dark side returned. She could not find one redeeming
point in his conduct. Despair seized her soul. Her own misery was set
against a dark background, for she looked beneath the surface of current
events. She heard not the music of the ball-room, but that of the
battle-field. She saw not the dances of the heedless, but the tears of
the motherless and the orphaned. The luxury of the upper classes might
deceive some men, but it could not deafen her to the complaints of the
poor, who were only waiting their chance to proclaim to the new
Constitution that they wanted not fine speeches, but bread. Other
discomforts contributed their share to her burden. A severe cold had
settled upon her lungs, and she imagined she was in a galloping
consumption. Her lodgings were not very convenient, but she had put up
with them, waiting day by day for Imlay's return. Weary of her life as
Job was of his, she, like him, spoke out in the bitterness of her soul.
Her letters from this time on are written from the very valley of the
shadow of death. On February 9 she wrote:--

"The melancholy presentiment has for some time hung on my spirits,
that we were parted forever; and the letters I received this day,
by Mr. ----, convince me that it was not without foundation. You
allude to some other letters, which I suppose have miscarried; for
most of those I have got were only a few, hasty lines calculated to
wound the tenderness that the sight of the superscriptions excited.

"I mean not, however, to complain; yet so many feelings are
struggling for utterance, and agitating a heart almost bursting
with anguish, that I find it very difficult to write with any
degree of coherence.

"You left me indisposed, though you have taken no notice of it; and
the most fatiguing journey I ever had contributed to continue it.
Ho