emed to beckon The Dreamer.

CHAPTER X.

The session at the University did not begin until the middle of
February, so love's young dream was not to be interrupted too soon.
Meantime, its sweetness was only enhanced by thought of the coming
separation. The affair had too, the interest of secrecy, for the
youthful lovers well knew the storm of opposition that would be raised,
in both their homes, if it should be discovered. This need of secrecy
made frequent meetings and exchange of vows impossible, but it gave to
such as occurred the flavor of stolen sweets and kept the young sinners
in a tantalized state which was excruciating and at the same time
delightful, and which still further fed the flames and convinced them of
the realness and intensity of their passion.

When they did meet, their awed, joyous confessions of mutual love
charmed the lonely, romantic boy by their very novelty. In them his
fairest dreams were fulfilled. How sweet it was in these rare, stolen
moments, to crush the pure young creature, who would be his own some
day, against his wildly beating heart--how passing sweet to hear against
his ear her whispered, hesitating vows of deep, everlasting love!

In his pretty new room overlooking the terraced garden of the stately
mansion which had become his home, Edgar Poe plunged headlong into
Byron, and in the mood thus induced, penned many a verse, no worse and
not much better than the rhymes of lovelorn youths the world over and
time out of mind, to be copied into Myra's album.

Between the love-making and preparation for college, time took wings. In
what seemed an incredibly short space summer and fall were gone,
Christmas, with its festivities, was over and the new year--the year
1826--had opened.

It was upon St. Valentine's Day that, with a feeling of solemnity worthy
of the act, the seventeen year old lover and student wrote the name
Edgar Allan Poe, and the date of his birth, upon the matriculation book
of the University of Virginia--open for its second session. Upon the day
before the beauty and the poetry--_the inspiration_--of the place had
burst upon him, and this first impression still held his soul in thrall.

Here, in this fair Virginia vale, ringed about with the heaven-kissing
hills of the Blue Ridge, the scholastic village conjured by Jefferson's
fertile imagination lay before him in the clear, winter sunshine. Its
lawns and its gardens were just now white with an unbroken bla