peak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!
Ligeia! in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden
impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone--by
Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is
no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that
I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my
betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the
wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or
was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute
no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own--a
wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?
I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have
utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
And, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of
idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened,
then most surely she presided over mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory falls me not. It is
the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in
her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray
the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible
lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a
shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study save
by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand
upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was
the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and spirit-lifting vision
more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered vision about the
slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of
that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the
classical labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says
Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of
beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet, although I saw
that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity--although
I perceived that her loveliness was indeed "exquisite," and felt that
there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I have tried in vain
to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of "the
strange." I examined the contour of the