Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/160

144 She had at least one pleasure that helped to soften her cares. This was her love for the child, which, always great, was increased by Imlay's cruelty. The tenderness which he by his indifference repulsed, she now lavished upon Fanny. She seemed to feel that she ought to make amends for the fact that her child was, to all intents and purposes, fatherless.

It so happened that at one time she was obliged to leave her child with her nurse for about a month. Business called her to Tönsberg in Norway, and the journey would have been bad for Fanny, who was cutting her teeth. "I felt more at leaving my child than I thought I should," she wrote to Imlay, "and whilst at night I imagined every instant that I heard the half-formed sounds of her voice, I asked myself how I could think of parting with her for ever, of leaving her thus helpless." Here indeed was a stronger argument against suicide than Christianity or its "aftershine." This absence stimulated her motherly solicitude and heightened her sense of responsibility. In her appeals to Imlay to settle upon his future course in her regard, she now began to dwell upon their child as the most important reason to keep them together.

He seems to have written to her regularly. At times she reproached him for not letting her hear from him, but at others she acknowledged the receipt of three and five letters in one morning. If these had been preserved, hers would not seem as importunate as they do now, for he gave her reason to suppose that he was anxious for a reunion, and wrote in a style which she told him she may have deserved, but which she had not expected from him. She also referred to his admission that her words tortured him; and there was talk of a