“After tea,” on warm nights, the houses overflowed into these verandahs, and there was much visiting from one to another—­much light-hearted talk and happy laughter; the popular theme being whatever happened to be “the news.”

It was the day of contentment, for wants were moderate and plentifully supplied; the day of satisfaction in wholesome domestic joys; the day of hospitality without grudging; the day when sweetness extracted from little pleasures did not need spicing, for palates were not jaded; the day of the ideal simple life.

Upon this night, as on other nights, young girls who were not yet “gone to the springs” floated along the fashionable promenades, in airy muslins, with their cavaliers beside them.  Groups of gentlemen and ladies sat on the porches and children played hide-and-seek, chased fire-flies, or sat on the steps and listened to the talk of their elders.  And everywhere, in all of the groups, the chief topic was the boy, Edgar Poe, and his wonderful swim.

And the boy who had in an afternoon become, for the time being at least, the foremost figure in town, knew it, but did not care.

To lie alone on the grass by the grave of his dead divinity and gaze at the far stars, and brood upon his young sorrows—­this gave him more satisfaction than to be the central figure of any one of the groups singing his praise; filled him with a romantic despair that to his high-strung soul had a more delicately sweet flavor than positive pleasure.

As to the erect gentleman in the high stock and the pretty lady with the tender, anxious face—­they had, for the present, no part in his thoughts.  It was wrong and ungrateful of him that they should not have, and if he had remembered them he would have known that it was wrong and ungrateful; but he would not have cared.  And as for his food—­he had supped royally, and without compunction, upon the fruit of an inviting orchard to which he had helped himself, unblushingly, upon his way into town.

A reckless mood, born of the restlessness that was in his blood, was upon him.

The truth was, that poignant as was his pleasure in dwelling upon his poetical sorrow for the adored “Helen”—­his “lost Lenore”—­it did not fully satisfy him.  His youthful heart was hungry for response to his out-poured sentiment, for the more robust diet of mutual love.  In plain English, Edgar Poe wanted, and wanted badly, a sweetheart, though he did not suspect it.

* * * * *

When, finally, he scaled the cemetery wall and took his way homeward he did not go directly to the dormer-windowed cottage where the erect gentleman and the pretty lady awaited him.  Just as he was approaching it he heard Elmira Royster’s guitar in the porch opposite, and he crossed the street and entered the Royster’s gate.

The Roysters and Allans had been neighbors for years and he and Elmira had been “brought up together.”  At the sound of approaching footsteps the guitar grew suddenly silent and a slight, rather colorless girl in a white dress, with a white flower in her fluffy blonde hair, came from out the shadow of the microphilla rose that embowered the porch and stood in the full light of the moon, giving him greeting.