“If you could let go of your obsession with making a fortune, we could be happy. I thought you were a man of ideas and imagination—”

“I’m a man of commerce as well, Mary. Why can’t you love me as I am?”

When Imlay sailed for London, I took Fanny back to Paris, hoping it would feel like home. The city was reopening, to itself and the world, but my own life grew small. Some friends were dead, others had escaped the country, Helen Maria in Switzerland, the Barlows in Hamburg, Paine still languishing in jail. Fanny was a wonder, and I adored motherhood, but I couldn’t take her everywhere. With no help, and hardly any means, I had to refuse invitations, stopped reading and writing, did everything myself. The apartment in Saint-Germain felt empty without Imlay, and since I’d refused his offer of money—out of pride and principle—I couldn’t stay there on my own, and didn’t want to.

I took new lodgings with a sweet German family. The father was always sunny, helped with the children, doted on his hardworking wife. They seemed to rest in each other’s company, laugh and tell stories, finish each other’s sentences, as if they spoke a language invented just for them. It was the life I wanted with Imlay. If he could only see them as I did—the perfect happiness they’d made without any fortune to speak of, except the love they had for each other—I knew he would return to us.

I had argued, in the book I’d just finished, that if men could learn to value familial love more than power, money, and land, despotism would die a natural death. Imlay had agreed with all of it. I wondered if it was only theoretical to him, while for me there was now no difference between the public and private, home and history. Back and forth in letters, we each argued our case.