As has been said, when Mr. Allan had discovered that his adopted son was a rhymster, he had rebuked him severely for such idle waste of time, and in a vain attempt to clip the wings of Pegasus, threatened him with punishment if he should hear of such folly again.  Mrs. Allan, on the contrary, though she was not a bookish woman, had protested against her husband’s command—­urging that Edgar be encouraged to cultivate his talent.  The ability to compose verse seemed to her, in a boy of Edgar’s age, little short of miraculous, and, proud of her pet’s accomplishment, she heaped indiscriminate praise upon every line that she saw of his writing.

The boy, hardly knowing which way to escape, between these two fires that bade fair to work the ruin of his gift, turned eagerly to his new friend.  “Helen” gently told him that she believed his talent to be a sacred trust, and that he would be committing sin to bury it—­even though by so doing he should be fulfilling the wishes of his foster-father to whom he owed so much.  He must, however, not forget his duty to Mr. Allan in regard to this matter, as in other things, but treat his views with all the consideration possible.  Above all things, he was never to depart from the truth in talking to him, but to tell him in a straightforward and respectful way that he believed it his duty when poetical thoughts presented themselves to his mind, to set them down, and even to encourage and invite such thoughts.

At the same time, she earnestly warned him against being overmuch impressed by the flattering estimates of his work of his friends, especially of his mother, who was far too partial to him, personally, to be a safe judge of his writings.

A happier summer than is often given mortals to know, Edgar the Dreamer passed at the feet of the lovely young matron who had become a sort of mother-confessor to him.  Happiness which, with a touch of the superstition that was characteristic of him he often told himself was too perfect to last.  What was it that made him feel sometimes in looking upon her under the serene sky of that ideal summer that a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand threw its shadow upon her?  Was it that faint hint of sadness in her dark eyes or the ethereal radiance of her pale complexion that while thrilling him with delight in the exquisite quality of her beauty, filled him with foreboding?

* * * * *

Ere the frosts of autumn had robbed her garden of its glory, blighting sorrow had fallen upon her tender mother-heart in the death of a darling baby girl.  Beneath this blow the health of sweet “Helen,” always frail, succumbed, and her home became thenceforth as a living tomb, in which the few who ever saw her again trod softly and spoke in hushed voices.

When the earliest roses were in bloom in her garden two years after Edgar Poe first saw her there, she lay in her coffin, and for him, the world seemed to have come to an end.