At Tønsberg, Norway’s oldest settlement, I met first thing with the thoughtful, good-natured Judge Wulfsberg, who had charge of our case. He said a fair inquiry would require him to interview everyone involved and that I should expect to stay three weeks at least, or I might as well not have come. When he saw the look on my face, I told him about Fanny, and lamented that I hadn’t brought my daughter with me. What I left out is that I no longer knew who I was without her. She had come to seem, even more than Imlay, my true anchor in the world.

The judge had found me a charming room in a quiet inn with a commanding view of the sea, ringed by an amphitheater of woods. It was almost evening, and I wanted to feel it on my skin. Standing under a towering grove of aspen and beeches, I turned my face to feel the whispering softness of those western gales. They almost died away that time of night, the leaves trembling into stillness. A light shower had fallen; the juniper, the underwood of the forest, exhaled a lush perfume that enveloped me. Even the moon seemed to say hello.

No one at the inn could speak English or French, which was a good pretext to dine alone—and they let me at a late hour, which became my habit. Sitting by myself in the little dining room, with its tall white-trimmed windows, I was surprised to find that I relished my aloneness. Each singing scrape of knife and fork, delicate clink of glass was mine, every taste and thought my own.

With three weeks to fill and so much time by myself, I began to occupy the space it afforded, as it occupied me. I took long, blissful walks in pine and fir groves, struck with a mystic reverence, a sense that they were conscious of their own existence and the pleasure they gave. Fanny Blood walked beside me; I could hear her voice warbling over the heath. I found a swimming rivulet just out of town, but soon wanted to bathe in the sea. A young woman, with ice-blue eyes, proposed rowing me across the water among the rocks to a place she knew, but since she was pregnant, I took the oars and learned to row, soon becoming expert, even going by myself, my thoughts keeping time with the oars.