“Poe has great intellectual power,” he said with emphasis, “great intellectual power, but,” he added, with a sidelong glance of the furtive eye and a confidential drop in the voice, “but—­he has no principle—­no moral sense.”

The poison reached the destination for which it was intended—­the ears of Helen Whitman—­in due course, and it terrified her as had none of the rumors she had heard before.  Still her lover floundered in the dark—­baffled—­wondering—­not able to make her out.  Why did she tantalize him—­torture him, thus?—­keeping him dangling between Heaven and hell?—­he asked himself, and he asked her, over and over again.  He became more and more convinced that there was a reason,—­what was it?

Finally she gave it to him in its baldness and its brutality, just as it had come to her—­wrote it to him in a letter.  It brought him a rude awakening from his dream of bliss.  That such a charge should be brought against him at all was bitter enough, but that it could be repeated to him by “Helen” seemed unbelievable.

“You do not love me,” he sadly wrote in reply, “or you would not have written these terrible words.”  Then he swore a great oath:  “By the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor—­that with the exception of occasional follies and excesses which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek—­or to yours.”

He followed the letter with a visit—­again throwing himself at her feet and thrilling her with his eloquence and with the magic of his personality.

She gave him a half promise and said she would write to him in Lowell, where he had engaged to deliver a lecture.

In this town was a roof-tree which was a haven of rest to The Dreamer.  Beneath it dwelt his friend and confidant, “Annie” Richmond—­his soul’s sweet “sister,” as he loved to call her.  And there he waited with a chastened joy, for he felt assured that the long wished for yes was about to be said, yet dared not give himself over prematurely, to the ecstacy that would soon be his.  In the pleasant, friendly family circle of the Richmonds, he sat during those chill November evenings, seeing pictures in the glowing fire, as he held sweet “Annie’s” sympathetic hand in his, while the only sound that broke the silence was the ticking of the grandfather’s clock in a shadowy corner.

Thus quietly, patiently, he waited.

* * * * *

But in Providence the Griswold poison was at work.  All the friends and relatives of “Helen” were possessed of full vials of it—­which they industriously poured into her ears.  Against it the recollection of the night in the garden and her belief that Fate had ordained her union with the poet, had no avail.  The letter that she sent her lover was more non-committal—­colder—­than any he had received from her before, yet there was still enough of indecision in it to keep him tantalized.  In a state of mind well nigh distraction, he bade “Annie” and her cheerful fireside farewell and set his face toward Providence; but he went in a dream—­the demon Despair, possessing him.