vision. To be with Rima again--my lost Rima
recovered--mine, mine at last! No longer the old vexing doubt now--"You
are you, and I am I--why is it?"--the question asked when our souls were
near together, like two raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly
nearer, ever nearer: for now they had touched and were not two, but one
inseparable drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by
time, nor shattered by death's blow, nor resolved by any alchemy.

I had other company besides this unfailing vision and the bright dancing
fire that talked to me in its fantastic fire language. It was my custom
to secure the door well on retiring; grief had perhaps chilled my blood,
for I suffered less from heat than from cold at this period, and the
fire seemed grateful all night long; I was also anxious to exclude all
small winged and creeping night-wanderers. But to exclude them entirely
proved impossible: through a dozen invisible chinks they would find
their way to me; also some entered by day to lie concealed until after
nightfall. A monstrous hairy hermit spider found an asylum in a dusky
corner of the hut, under the thatch, and day after day he was there,
all day long, sitting close and motionless; but at dark he invariably
disappeared--who knows on what murderous errand! His hue was a deep
dead-leaf yellow, with a black and grey pattern, borrowed from some wild
cat; and so large was he that his great outspread hairy legs, radiating
from the flat disk of his body, would have covered a man's open hand.
It was easy to see him in my small interior; often in the night-time my
eyes would stray to his corner, never to encounter that strange hairy
figure; but daylight failed not to bring him. He troubled me; but now,
for Rima's sake, I could slay no living thing except from motives of
hunger. I had it in my mind to injure him--to strike off one of his
legs, which would not be missed much, as they were many--so as to make
him go away and return no more to so inhospitable a place. But courage
failed me. He might come stealthily back at night to plunge his long,
crooked farces into my throat, poisoning my blood with fever and
delirium and black death. So I left him alone, and glanced furtively and
fearfully at him, hoping that he had not divined any thoughts; thus
we lived on unsocially together. More companionable, but still in an
uncomfortable way, were the large crawling, running insects--crickets,
beetles, and others. They