valid moved to murmur
some loving words or to babble of the flowers in the Valley. She was in
no pain but she was very tired. She was not unhappy, for the two whom
she loved and who loved her were with her and though she was tired she
soon would rest--in Heaven. When she spoke of going the man's heart
stood still with terror. He held the hand closer and pressed his lips
more fiercely upon it.

He would not let her go, he vowed. There was no power in Heaven or hell
to whom he would yield her.

But she sweetly plead that he would not try to detain her--that he would
learn to bear the idea of her leaving him which now gave her no
unhappiness but for one thought--the thought that after a season he
might, in the love of some other maiden, forget the sweet life he had
lived with her in the Valley, and that because of his forgetting, it
would not be given to him to join her at last, in the land where she
would be waiting for him--the land of Rest.

At her words, he flung himself upon his knees beside her bed and offered
up a vow to herself and to Heaven that he would never bind himself in
marriage to any other daughter of earth, or in any way prove himself
forgetful of her memory and her love, and to make the vow the stronger,
he invoked a curse upon his head if he should ever prove false to his
promise.

And as she listened her soft eyes grew brighter and she, in turn, made a
vow to him that even after her departure she would watch over him in
spirit and if it were permitted her, would return to him visibly in the
watches of the night, but if that were beyond her power, would at least
give him frequent indications of her presence--sighing upon him in the
evening winds or filling the air which he breathed with perfume from the
censers of the angels.

And she sighed as if a deadly burden had been lifted from her breast,
and trembled and wept and vowed that her bed of death had been made easy
by his vow.

* * * * *

But it was not to be the bed of death. Little by little the shadow
lifted from over the cottage--the shadow of the wings of the Angel of
Death--and sunshine fell where the shadow had been, and a soft zephyr
made music, that was like the music of the voice of "Ligeia," in the
trees which dropped their sheath of ice. And the snow disappeared from
the streets and from the garden-spot which was all green underneath, and
by the time the crocuses were up health and happiness reigned