This letter is followed by another, written in the same month, ending with ‘I part with you in peace.’ But the final parting was still later. Even so late as 26th January, 1796, she is writing to Mr. A. Hamilton Rowan in terms which indicate a faint, lingering hope that even yet Imlay would at some time of the future, change and return to her. ‘Mr. Imlay,’ she says, ‘would be glad to supply all my pecuniary wants; but unless he returns to himself, I would perish first;’--words showing that, even so late as the last week of January, 1796, she could think of what she would do if Imlay should return to himself, _i.e._ to her. Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter by William Godwin, the daughter who lived to be Mrs. Shelley and mother of the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, was born on 30th August, 1797, just five calendar months after the marriage (celebrated at old St. Pancras Church, on 29th March, 1797), that united the author of _The Rights of Woman_ and the author of _Political Justice_ in lawful wedlock, when they had already been living several months together in Free Love. The date of the commencement of their association in Free Love is unknown; but whilst it must have been as far back as December, 1796, there is reason for thinking the free-contract was entered into some weeks earlier. It follows, therefore, that the woman who leapt from Putney Bridge in the winter of 1795-6, and had not absolutely despaired, on 26th January, 1796, of seeing her Free Lover Imlay return to himself and her, in something much less than a year, probably in so short a time as nine months, possibly in a much shorter time than nine months, was living in Free Love with her old friend William Godwin,--who was in his forty-first year when he thus took Mary Wollstonecraft Imlay, _ætat._ thirty-seven, under his protection.