He told her that the tenderest father could not more anxiously interest himself in the fate of a darling child than he did in hers ... He had called her “My child!” ... His child, what an association of ideas. If I had had such a father! She could not dwell on the thoughts, the wishes which obtruded themselves. Her mind was unhinged, and passion unperceived filled her whole soul.[13] Another speech of “Henry’s” is significant in the Ann-“Mary” relationship: “I would give the world for a picture with the expression I have seen in your face when you have been supporting your friend [in your arms].”[14] As to the final relation of “Mary” to her husband, after her return to England she faints at the sight of him, and finally, demanding her freedom, retires to the country where she devotes herself to good works and waits for death, in which she will be reunited with Ann, and “where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.”[15] This whole cathartic outpouring raises interesting questions as to the author’s own understanding of its emotional significance. It was published anonymously, but her own name and that of Henry appear unchanged, their relations in the tale, as in life, being beyond question blameless. So were “Mary’s” with Ann on the surface, though the author states openly that “Mary always slept with Ann, who was subject to terrifying dreams.” Yet she substituted “Ann” for Fanny, even though the latter had passed beyond the possible reach of slander. Was she perhaps aware of criticism directed against their relationship? Mary had, at twenty, been governess to the children of Lady Kingsborough in Ireland, and was dismissed because the children grew too fond of her.[16] The fourteen-year-old daughter in particular was so attached as to become ill during a brief separation from Mary. In a letter preserved in Godwin’s _Memoirs_, Mary refers to the pleasure she derived from the girl’s “innocent caresses,” an odd adjective had Mary not been aware of possible caresses between women that were otherwise. The answer seems to lie in two passages, one from the _Rights of Women_ in which she refers to physical love as “perhaps the most evanescent of all passions,” and the other in a letter to Imlay written after it was all too plain that his infatuation had burned out: