He would not let her go, he vowed.  There was no power in Heaven or hell to whom he would yield her.

But she sweetly plead that he would not try to detain her—­that he would learn to bear the idea of her leaving him which now gave her no unhappiness but for one thought—­the thought that after a season he might, in the love of some other maiden, forget the sweet life he had lived with her in the Valley, and that because of his forgetting, it would not be given to him to join her at last, in the land where she would be waiting for him—­the land of Rest.

At her words, he flung himself upon his knees beside her bed and offered up a vow to herself and to Heaven that he would never bind himself in marriage to any other daughter of earth, or in any way prove himself forgetful of her memory and her love, and to make the vow the stronger, he invoked a curse upon his head if he should ever prove false to his promise.

And as she listened her soft eyes grew brighter and she, in turn, made a vow to him that even after her departure she would watch over him in spirit and if it were permitted her, would return to him visibly in the watches of the night, but if that were beyond her power, would at least give him frequent indications of her presence—­sighing upon him in the evening winds or filling the air which he breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels.

And she sighed as if a deadly burden had been lifted from her breast, and trembled and wept and vowed that her bed of death had been made easy by his vow.

* * * * *

But it was not to be the bed of death.  Little by little the shadow lifted from over the cottage—­the shadow of the wings of the Angel of Death—­and sunshine fell where the shadow had been, and a soft zephyr made music, that was like the music of the voice of “Ligeia,” in the trees which dropped their sheath of ice.  And the snow disappeared from the streets and from the garden-spot which was all green underneath, and by the time the crocuses were up health and happiness reigned once more in the cottage.

But it was a happiness with a difference.  A happiness which for all it was so sweet, was tinctured with the bitter of remorse.

During the illness of his beloved wife, Edgar Poe had lived over and over again through the horror of her death and burial with all of the details with which the circumstances of his life had so early made him familiar—­and had tasted the desolation for him which must follow.  While his soul had been overwhelmed with this supreme sorrow his mind had been unusually clear and alert.  He had been alive to the slightest change in her condition.  Anticipating her every whim, he had nursed her with the tenderness the untiring devotion, of a mother with her babe.  Through all his grief he was quiet, self-possessed, efficient.

But with the first glimmer of hope, his head reeled.  His reason which had stood the shock of despair, or seemed to stand it, gave way before the return of happiness.  A wild delirium possessed him.  Joy drove him mad, and already drunk with joy—­mad with it—­he flung prudence, philosophy, resolutions to the wind and drank wine—­and drank—­and drank.  When—­where—­how much—­he did not know; but at last merciful illness overtook him and stopped him in his wild career.