He searched the wet darkness before he spoke. “You never wonder why Johnson saves a chair for him, sets his plate out, whether he comes or not? Don’t you see the look in his eyes when Fuseli arrives, as if the whole room just came alive? And the look in his eyes when he goes?”

I pulled my heavy cloak closer around me, stung. We stood silent under a gas lamp that threw shadows across our faces, the night sky spitting rain. I couldn’t bear him telling me what to notice, how to behave, with whom to consort. I was exhausted by being told by men, and women too, what sort of person I was and ought to be. But I hadn’t seen it, he was right.

A coach rattled near us, then stopped at our shoulders. The door flung open, and Fuseli—of course, Fuseli—stuck his head out.

“Get in, for God’s sake!” he said to us. “You’ll both drown.”

Godwin waited for my answer, but when I said nothing, turned to Fuseli. I could see the sharp line of his proud jaw. “No, Fuseli,” he said. “Thank you just the same.”

He looked back at me. They both did. Godwin and Fuseli, awaiting my answer.

Even as I took Fuseli’s hand and climbed inside, I looked back over my shoulder to see Godwin turn and walk away. I knew mine was an act of defiance, of hurt feelings, a flash of anger. I couldn’t see that my own revolution was just beginning.

I remember it now, little bird, as a sort of watery dream lit by a single chandelier, standing before a large gold-framed mirror in the middle of Fuseli’s studio, green walls two stories high, dawn breaching the windows. I am drenched and worn out, but I want him to paint me. I need him to paint me. Without a single word between us, he lowers the hood of my cape, unties what ties I have, releases what clasps. I let him slide my wet wool cloak, limp clothes all the way to the floor. Let him dab my body dry with a towel, and drape a long indigo shawl loosely about my shoulders, push my hair from my face. I let him see me.

“You are a thing to behold, Mary Wollstonecraft,” he said, standing some few feet behind me, looking at my visage in the mirror. “A thing of rare beauty.”

“Why rare?”

“Because your strength is your weakness. The part you guard most closely, deny most fiercely, is the part of you that most wants to be free. If you would only surrender to it.”

“Surrender. Is that what you want from me?”