Unstrung, unmanned, almost bereft of reason, his old dissatisfaction with himself and the world overtook him—­a longing to be out of it all, for forgetfulness, for peace, yea, even the peace of the grave,—­why not?

A passionate longing—­a homesickness—­for the sure, the steadfast, the unvariable love of his beautiful Virginia consumed him.  Oh, if he could but lie down and sleep and forget until one sweet day he should wake in the land where she awaited him, and where they would construct anew, and for eternity, the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass!

He listened....  For the first time since the Star of Love had ushered in a new day in his life, he heard the swinging of the censers of the angels—­he inhaled the incense—­he heard the voice of Virginia in the sighing wind.  She seemed to call to him.

“I am coming, Heartsease!” he whispered as he quaffed the potion that he reckoned would bear him to her.

* * * * *

But it was not to be.  When he awaked, weak and ill, but sane, he found himself with friends.  Calmness and strength returned and with them, horror at the deed he had so nearly committed, and deep contrition.

With all haste he again presented himself at the door of “Helen,” beseeching her to marry him at once and save him, as he believed she only could, from himself.  And the consequences of her indecision making her more alarmed for him than she had formerly been for herself, she agreed to an engagement, though not to immediate marriage.

He returned to Fordham and to faithful Mother Clemm a wreck of his former self, but engaged to be married!

Yet he was not happy—­a new horror possessed him.  As in the night when the Star of Love first rose upon his vigil it had stopped over the door of “a legended tomb,” so now again was his pathway closed.  Turn which way he would, the tomb of Virginia seemed to frown upon him.  He remembered his promise to her that upon no other daughter of earth would he look with the eyes of love.  Vainly did he seek to justify himself to his own heart for breaking the promise.  No one could ever supplant her, or fill the void in his life her death had made, he told himself—­this new love was something different, and in no way disturbed her memory.

But the tomb still stood in his way.

“I am calm and tranquil,” he wrote “Helen,” “and but for a strange shadow of coming evil which haunts me I should be happy.  That I am not supremely happy, even when I feel your dear love at my heart, terrifies me.”

Later he wrote,

“You say that all depends on my own firmness.  If this be so all is safe.  Henceforward I am strong.  But all does not depend, dear Helen, upon my firmness—­all depends upon the sincerity of your love.”

* * * * *