Feeling a fit of trembling coming on, I sat on the ground and pulled my knees to my chest, resting my cheek there, bone to bone, the way I had when I was young, and closed my eyes to still my breath. When I opened them, the most remarkable thing happened, little bird. I saw, in the azure eve, brilliant patches of earth popping all around me, the most exquisite verdure. And then a clutch of wild pansy caught my eye, peeking over a dark stone. I took one of its perfect blossoms in my fingers—love-in-idleness—sprays of sunny yellow radiating from its center and deep violet petals, velvet against my cheek.

I felt a sudden peacefulness wash over me. I knew it was Fanny Blood, not inside me but all around, in the glow, the never-night, holding out a lamp for me, a talisman against the darkness. I’d been without her for so long now—she’d soon be ten years dead—but here she was, Fanny, who had taught me to believe in the possibility of spontaneous pleasure and argued always that we were right to expect happiness. She was whispering a way forward, as she always did, one footfall at a time.

I didn’t want to go to bed, my senses awake and imagination busy. And nothing could equal the beauty of that northern summer night. All Nature seemed at rest, even the rocks, in deep repose. I kissed little Fanny’s cheek as she slept, my emotions vibrating on the brink between ecstasy and agony that gave a poignancy to all my sensations. I felt alive again.

Writing at midnight without a candle, I penned a letter to Johnson telling him I thought I would turn my travels into a book of some sort, and hoped that he would publish it. Then I tucked the violet blossom in a letter to Imlay, feeling strangely hopeful.

And so began our midsummer journey in the great wild North. By horseback, carriage rides, boat trips, ferry passages, long walks, ocean swims, and flights of fancy did I travel, and by travel I mean think, and by think I mean try to relocate myself in the world, and the world in me. Only a few weeks before, I’d wanted to die, aiming at tranquility, but instead almost destroyed the energy of my soul—almost pulled out by the roots what makes it mine. I had come here, I knew, to find it again.

I confess that I wrote often to Imlay, usually at night when I was most fragile, to report the progress of my journey, but instead poured out my fears. I pleaded with him not to taunt me with promises he couldn’t keep, implored him to decide once and for all whether we would live as one or part forever.

But between those lines I lived another life.