Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/198

182 and conceited, but succumbed to her personal charms.

Godwin now began to see her frequently. She had established herself in rooms in Cumming Street, Pentonville, where she was very near him. They met often at the houses of Miss Hayes, Mr. Johnson, and other mutual friends. Her interests and tastes were the same as his; and this fact he recognized more fully as time went on. It is probably because his thoughts were so much with her, that the work he accomplished during this year was comparatively small. None of the other women he knew and admired had made him act spontaneously and forget to reason out his conduct as she did. He really had, at one time, thought of making Amelia Alderson his wife; but this, for some unrecorded reason, proving an impossibility, he calmly dismissed the suggestion from his mind and continued the friend he had been before. Had Mrs. Reveley been single he might have allowed himself to love her, as he did later, when he was a widower and she a widow. But so long as her husband was alive, and he knew he had no right to do so, he, with perfect equanimity, regulated his affection to suit the circumstances. But he never reasoned either for or against his love for Mary Wollstonecraft. It sprang from his heart, and it had grown into a strong passion before he had paused to deliberate as to its advisability.

As for Mary, Godwin's friendship, coming just when it did, was an inestimable service. Never in all her life had she needed sympathy as she did then. She was virtually alone. Her friends were kind, but their kindness could not quite take the place of the