n by
this to say that you have nothing to fear from my desperation.

Farewell.

Godwin makes the incredible statement that Imlay refusing to break off
his new connection, though he declared it to be of a temporary nature,
Mary proposed that she should live in the same house with his mistress.
In this way he would not be separated from his child, and she would
quietly wait the end of his intrigue. Imlay, according to Godwin,
consented to her suggestion, but afterwards thought better of it and
refused. There is not a word in her letters to confirm this extraordinary
story. It is simply impossible that at one moment she should have been
driven to suicide by the knowledge that he had a mistress, and that at
the next she should take a step which was equivalent to countenancing his
conduct. It is more rational to conclude that Godwin was misinformed,
than to believe this.

Towards the end of November Imlay went to Paris with the woman for whom
he had sacrificed wife and child. Mary felt that the end had now really
come, as is seen in the few letters which still remain. Once the first
bitterness of her disappointment had been mastered, the old tenderness
revived, and she renewed her excuses for him. "My affection for you is
rooted in my heart," she wrote fondly and sadly. "I know you are not what
you now seem, nor will you always act and feel as you now do, though I
may never be comforted by the change." And in another letter she said,
"Resentment and even anger are momentary emotions with me, and I wish to
tell you so, that if you ever think of me, it may not be in the light of
an enemy." Writing to him, however, was more than she could bear. Each
letter reopened the wound he had inflicted, and inspired her with a wild
desire to see him. She therefore wisely concluded that all correspondence
between them must cease. In December, 1795, while he was still in Paris,
she bade him her last farewell, though in so doing she was, as she says,
piercing her own heart. She refused to hold further communication with
him or to receive his money, but she told him she would not interfere in
anything he might wish to do for Fanny. Here it may be said that, though
Imlay declared that a certain sum should be settled upon the latter, not
a cent of it was ever paid. This is Mary's last letter to him:--

LONDON, December, 1795.

You must do as you please with respect to the child. I could wish
that it might be done