The Valley of the Many-Colored Grass had been dissolved—­the spell that had brought it into being broken, by the separation, and he longed with a longing that was as hunger and thirst to reconstruct this magical world in which he and his Virginia dwelt apart with her who was mother to them both, in Richmond.  And so, poor as he was, he arranged to bring Virginia and Mother Clemm to Richmond and establish them in a boarding house where he could see them often and wait with better grace the still happier day of making his marriage public.

The day came more speedily than they had let themselves hope.  The popularity of the Messenger and the fame of its assistant editor had grown with leaps and bounds.  The new year brought the welcome gift of promotion to full editorship, with an increase of salary.  With the opening spring began plans for the divulging of the great secret—­for public acknowledgment of the marriage.  But how was it to be done?—­That was the question!  Edgar Poe knew too well the disapproval with which the world regarded secret marriages—­with which he himself regarded them, ordinarily.  His sense of refinement of fitness, of the sacredness of the marriage tie, revolted from the very idea.

In what fashion then, could he and his little bride proclaim their secret that would not do violence to their own taste or set a buzz of gossip going?  That the horrid lips of gossip should so much as breathe the name of his Virginia—­that Mrs. Grundy should dare shrug her decorous shoulders, if ever so slightly, at mention of that sacred name—.  The bare suggestion was intolerable!

At last a solution offered itself to his mind.  Not for an instant did he regret the sacred ceremony in Christ Church, Baltimore.  Not for worlds would he have cut short for one moment of time the duration of the beautiful spiritual marriage when he had been able to say to himself:  “She whose presence fills my heart and my life—­whose spirit I can feel near me at my work, in my hours of recreation and in my dreams, is my wife.”  But of this exquisite, this inexpressibly dear union the world was in utter ignorance.  It was known only to the Mother, the priest and the aged sexton.  To these witnesses always, as to themselves, their marriage would date from the moment when the blessing was invoked above their bowed heads in Christ Church, but to the world—­why not let it date from the day in which they would claim each other before the world, in Richmond?

The thing was most simple!  A second ceremony in the presence of a few friends—­a brief announcement in next day’s paper—­and their life would be begun with the dignity, the prestige, of public marriage.

* * * * *

The sixteenth of May was the day chosen for the event which was more like a wedding in Arcady than in latter-day society.  As at the secret ceremony, the customary preparations for a wedding were conspicuously absent; yet was not the whole town gala with sunshine and verdure and May-bloom and bird-song?