Why did she
tantalize him--torture him, thus?--keeping him dangling between Heaven
and hell?--he asked himself, and he asked her, over and over again. He
became more and more convinced that there was a reason,--what was it?

Finally she gave it to him in its baldness and its brutality, just as it
had come to her--wrote it to him in a letter. It brought him a rude
awakening from his dream of bliss. That such a charge should be brought
against him at all was bitter enough, but that it could be repeated to
him by "Helen" seemed unbelievable.

"You do not love me," he sadly wrote in reply, "or you would not have
written these terrible words." Then he swore a great oath: "By the God
who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of
dishonor--that with the exception of occasional follies and excesses
which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable
sorrow, I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush
to my cheek--or to yours."

He followed the letter with a visit--again throwing himself at her feet
and thrilling her with his eloquence and with the magic of his
personality.

She gave him a half promise and said she would write to him in Lowell,
where he had engaged to deliver a lecture.

In this town was a roof-tree which was a haven of rest to The Dreamer.
Beneath it dwelt his friend and confidant, "Annie" Richmond--his soul's
sweet "sister," as he loved to call her. And there he waited with a
chastened joy, for he felt assured that the long wished for _yes_ was
about to be said, yet dared not give himself over prematurely, to the
ecstacy that would soon be his. In the pleasant, friendly family circle
of the Richmonds, he sat during those chill November evenings, seeing
pictures in the glowing fire, as he held sweet "Annie's" sympathetic
hand in his, while the only sound that broke the silence was the ticking
of the grandfather's clock in a shadowy corner.

Thus quietly, patiently, he waited.

* * * * *

But in Providence the Griswold poison was at work. All the friends and
relatives of "Helen" were possessed of full vials of it--which they
industriously poured into her ears. Against it the recollection of the
night in the garden and her belief that Fate had ordained her union with
the poet, had no avail. The letter that she sent her lover was more
non-committal--colder--than any he had received from her before, yet
there was sti