It’s hard to see her prostrating herself like this, in the sort of letter that you can—I have—want to write directly after a breakup. But even with the humiliation there are flashes of insight into the sort of person she is and of her very own brand of bravery, the one that lured Spencer to the coast in the first place. “Those who have known me best have always said, that if ever I loved any one thoroughly my whole life must turn upon that feeling, and I find they said truly,” she writes, not knowing yet how true that will turn out to be. “I suppose no woman ever before wrote such a letter as this,” she concludes, “but I am not ashamed of it, for I am conscious that in the light of reason and true refinement I am worthy of your respect and tenderness, whatever gross men or vulgar-minded women might think of me.” This sort of imperviousness to soi-disant correctness made her suffer in Victorian society, but it is also the quality that makes Eliot’s life attractive to us now. So many of the characters in her fiction maintain, and what’s more, cherish, their own point of view against the dumb groupthink of their communities. Even as Evans loses herself for love at the age of thirty-three, a corner of her mind holds on to the idea that she is worthy, always was, and always will be. “I suppose no woman ever before,” she writes, with a glint.