Sophia came to sit next to me on the sofa, our thighs touching through our dresses. I had seen her voluptuousness in his drawings, in person, but here I felt it, the heat of her.

“We’ve been together nearly every day. In the most intense, elevated conversation,” I said.

“That is his game, to keep you in his thrall.” She tipped her long neck back to drink the last of her champagne, then rolled the stem in her fingers. “Henry Fuseli is a conqueror, Miss Wollstonecraft. And he has conquered you.” She set the flute down and turned her face to mine. “The painting is done. He’ll move on now to the next shiny object of his desire.”

“Then why did you send me the painting?”

“Because when I saw it, finished, I knew you were no longer merely an object—someone to be conquered—you were the subject. He has uncovered a deep, dark well of desire in you, and glimpsed your raw power, which is the one thing he respects above all else. And because he is a weak man, I could not take the chance … that he might be capable of love. I had to remove it from our life. First, the painting. And now you.”

I could feel my chest heave, breath shortening. “Please, Sophia. I’m begging you.”

“You are banished from our home. From our life.”

I stood abruptly. “You can’t do this to me. Fuseli won’t let you.”

“You have the painting to remember him by. I think that was generous of me. But my husband has agreed. He will never see you again.”

Johnson found me in a heap on his doorstep. He sat beside me, offered his kerchief, and let me weep. He seemed to know all, before I said a word.

“You can’t possess a river,” he said. “It always flows away.”

I wiped my eyes. “You won’t believe what I’ve done,” I said. “In a fit of pique I ran all the way home, and cut the painting off at the neck, and threw away her body—my body. All I have left is my head!”

“Well, at least you’re left that!” he said, trying hard not to laugh at the absurdity. We both were.

I put my face in my hand, humiliated. “Your friend Godwin was right about him. I should have listened.”

“Godwin is right about a good many things, but he doesn’t know what’s right for you.”

“It’s some defect in me, Joseph, some compound of weakness and resolution—my wayward heart invents its own misery.” I pounded my curled fist on my knee. “Why am I made like this? I feel desperate to understand the whole of my existence, some greater purpose or meaning, but here I am wailing like a child who longs for a toy she cannot have.”

“You might grow tired of it as soon as you got it.”