ance through
the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most
busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast
a triumph--with how vivid a delight--with how much of all that is
ethereal in hope did I _feel_, as she bent over me in studies but little
sought--but less known,--that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding
before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at
length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to
be forbidden.

How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some
years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves
and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her
presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many
mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting
the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller
than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently
upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed
with a too--too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the
transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the lofty
forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most gentle
emotion. I saw that she must die--and I struggled desperately in spirit
with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to
my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in
her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would
have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey
any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled
with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would
have soothed--I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild
desire for life--for life--_but_ for life--solace and reason were alike
the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most
convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external
placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle--grew more
low--yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly
uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened, entranced, to a melody
more than mortal--to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had
never before known.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been
easily aware t