kind; but above all he gave her that
special devotion without which she but half lived. In the restlessness
that followed her loss of Imlay's love, she had resolved to make the tour
of Italy or Switzerland. Therefore when she had returned to London,
expecting it to be but a temporary resting-place, she had taken furnished
lodgings. "Now, however," as Godwin says in his Memoirs, "she felt
herself reconciled to a longer abode in England, probably without exactly
knowing why this change had taken place in her mind." She moved to other
rooms in the extremity of Somer's Town, and filled them with the
furniture she had used in Store Street in the first days of her
prosperity, and which had since been packed away. The unpacking of this
furniture was with her what the removal of widows' weeds is with other
women. Her first love had perished; but from it rose another stronger and
better, just as the ripening of autumn's fruits follows the withering of
spring's blossoms. She mastered the harvest-secret, learning the value of
that death which yields higher fruition.

In July, Godwin left London and spent the month in Norfolk. Absence from
Mary made him realize more than he had hitherto done that she had become
indispensable to his happiness. She was constantly in his thoughts. The
more he meditated upon her, the more he appreciated her. There was less
pleasure in his excursion than in the meeting with her which followed it.
They were both glad to be together again; nor did they hesitate to make
their gladness evident. At the end of three weeks they had confessed to
each other that they could no longer live apart. Henceforward their lines
must be cast in the same places. Godwin's story of their courtship is
eloquent in its simplicity. It is almost impossible to believe that it
was written by the author of "Political Justice."

"The partiality we conceived for each other," he explains, "was in
that mode which I have always regarded as the purest and most
refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of
each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to
have said who was before, and who was after. One sex did not take
the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the
other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not
conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or
the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey