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Rh 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." 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 shilling of it was ever paid.

Mary saw him once or twice afterwards. When he came to London again, Godwin says that "she could not restrain herself from making another effort, and desiring to see him once more. During his absence,