“Hmm. Salt,” he said. “I guess you’re human after all.”

“What else would I be?”

“I don’t know, Mary. I’ve never met a human quite like you.”

It undid my proud heart to hear him call me by my given name. All the shame of loving, unloved, all my agony, I forgot. Within two weeks I was Imlay’s “dear girl.” When I chanced to catch myself in a mirror, I could see a luster in my eyes, my own cheeks the color of rose petals, and just as smooth. I heard cheerfulness in my voice, and felt a kind of universal love of everyone. Helen Maria told me my smile was bewitching, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d win every heart and soul down to the last man or woman in Paris.

A Frenchwoman who’d read my second Vindication and wanted to impress me told me she thought love affairs silly and demeaning for both parties, not worth the effort, and certainly not the drama that inevitably ensued. How could I tell her that I now disavowed myself? Fuseli was right after all. Passionate sex was an elemental ingredient of being human. But it was the union of two hearts, the joining of love with lovemaking, that mattered. At last I was part of the Revolution, an adventurer with Imlay in building a relationship between a man and woman, a love affair between equals. Where Fuseli was the tinder and spark, Imlay was my raging fire.

“Tant pis pour vous,” I said to the Frenchwoman. Too bad for you.

When eighty thousand Parisians marched at the end of May to protest the price of bread, they demanded the moderates be kicked out and the Jacobins take over. Many of our friends faced arrest; it was announced that all resident aliens had to chalk their names on their doors. I knew my hosts would be accused of harboring me, so installed myself in a small house three miles out of Paris, in Neuilly, where I might escape being spied upon.

The cottage was snug, with thick stucco walls, a stone hearth, low beamed ceilings. It was furnished, but I bought myself a simple walnut writing desk, where I read and wrote during the day. In the afternoons I took long walks in nearby forests and fields, reveling in Nature and breathing its cleansing air. My principal company was an old gardener, who wanted to do everything for me, even make my bed and bring me grapes—the best ones he saved for me. He warned me against the brigands and vagabonds who hid in the woods, but I felt untouchable.