In July, Godwin left London and spent the month in Norfolk. Absence from Mary made him realize more than he had hitherto done that she had become indispensable to his happiness. She was constantly in his thoughts. The more he meditated upon her, the more he appreciated her. There was less pleasure in his excursion than in the meeting with her which followed it. They were both glad to be together again; nor did they hesitate to make their gladness evident. At the end of three weeks they had confessed to each other that they could no longer live apart. Henceforward their lines must be cast in the same places. Godwin's story of their courtship is eloquent in its simplicity. It is almost impossible to believe that it was written by the author of Political Justice. He explains:—
The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. . . . It was friendship melting into love.
