cy--to lead and control it?"

Still the _yes_ that so often seemed trembling upon her lips was not
spoken. She received his almost daily letters and his frequent visits,
listened to his rapturous love-making--trembling, blushing, letting him
see that she was under the spell, that she loved him. Indeed she could
not have helped his seeing it had she wished; but when he spoke of
marriage she hesitated--tantalizing him to the point of madness, almost.

What was it that held her back?--She too, believed that it was the hand
of Fate that had brought them together--that they were pre-ordained to
cheer each other's latter years, to establish that intellectual
aristocracy of which he dreamed. Yet she shrank from taking the step.
When his great solemn eyes were upon her, his beautiful face pale and
haggard with excess of feeling, turned toward her, his eloquent words of
love in her ears, she sat as one entranced--bewitched; yet she would not
give the word he longed for--the word of willingness to embark with him
upon the sea of life. _Fear_ checked her. Such an uncharted sea it
seemed to her--she dared not say him yea!

The truth was the poison was working--the Griswold poison. The wildest
rumors came to her ears of the worse than follies of her lover. She knew
that they were at least, overdrawn--possibly altogether false--yet they
frightened her.

"Do you know Helen Whitman?" wrote one of The Dreamer's enemies to Dr.
Griswold. "Of course you have heard it rumored that she is to marry Poe.
Well, she has seemed to me a good girl and--you know what Poe is. Has
Mrs. Whitman no friend in your knowledge that can faithfully explain Poe
to her?"

But Rufus Griswold had already "explained Poe" to those whom he knew
would take pains to pass the explanation on to "Helen"--had dropped the
poison where he reckoned it would work with the greatest speed and
effect. The explanation, with the usual indirectness of a Griswold, was
sugared with a compliment.

"Poe has great intellectual power," he said with emphasis, "_great_
intellectual power, but," he added, with a sidelong glance of the
furtive eye and a confidential drop in the voice, "but--he has no
principle--no moral sense."

The poison reached the destination for which it was intended--the ears
of Helen Whitman--in due course, and it terrified her as had none of
the rumors she had heard before. Still her lover floundered in the
dark--baffled--wondering--not able to make her out.