She stood from the bed and took Mrs. B’s free hand in both of hers. “Would you do me the kindest favor, and drop a note to Mr. Godwin? He has writing rooms twenty doors down. He’ll get you a carriage from there. Unless you’re dead on your feet.”

Mrs. B knew the surge of energy in certain women who’d just given birth, as if they’d climbed to the peak of a mountain, and, surprised by their own strength, were eager to go again. Confinement for women like that was foolish. On this she and Mary agreed.

“A walk would do me good,” said Mrs. B.

Mary scooped up the child and walked into the study, put her gently down in the cradle, and sat at her writing desk. Mrs. B followed her to the threshold. She had tried to right the stack of letters as she’d found them.

“Hope I’ve left things in good order.”

Mary surveyed her desktop. “Never mind, Mrs. B,” she said, taking out a clean sheet. “I’ve been rereading our letters to each other, Godwin and I. It is, in a way, an epistolary history of our struggle.”

Mrs. B didn’t know what to say in return. This place, and these people, showed no signs of struggle, not a one that Mrs. B could name.

“I don’t remember, in all our years,” Mrs. B said, “ever quarreling, not really.”

“I don’t know if I mean quarreling,” said Mary. She looked at the midwife thoughtfully. “I have spent my whole life fighting for all women to be equal to all men. But I’ve found that for one woman to be equal to one man, and for him to be equal to her, that is another thing. At least for us.”

Mrs. B had a fleeting thought that she ought to have struggled more in her own marriage, though for what she didn’t know. Never mind. It was too late now.

“Do you know the strangest thing, Mrs. B? Mr. Godwin and I recently discovered that we were in Hoxton at the same time, years ago. I was sixteen, dreadfully unhappy. He was a student at the academy, only a half a mile away.” She gazed out the window. “To think that our shoulders might have brushed in the street.”

“I s’pose the good Lord didn’t think it your time to meet.”