r eyes, as unfathomable as the
ocean itself, he was struck dumb with reverence and wonder, for they
held in keeping all the secrets of the moon and the stars, of dawn and
sunset, of green things growing and flowers in bloom, of the butterfly
in the crysalis and on the wing, of still waters and of running brooks.

To the inner vision of this most unusual youth, "Ligeia"--this myth
called into being by the enchantment of his own fancy--not only became
as real as if she had been flesh and blood; his pagan soul bowed down
before her and she blotted from his mind, for the time, all thought or
consciousness of more robust womanhood. She became, in imagination, the
sharer of his studies, the wife of his bosom, and he sat at her feet and
gladly learned from her the beautiful, strange secrets of this fearfully
and wonderfully made world.

He was sometimes haunted by another, and a far less agreeable vision. In
spite of the absence of restraint under which he lived and the fact
that between his dreams, his books and his dissipations there seemed
little opportunity left for the still, small voice to make itself heard,
there were times when his better self shook off slumber and rose before
him like a ghost that, for all his efforts, would not be laid--a ghost
like him in all regards save for the sternness of its look and of the
voice which accused him in whispers to which all others ears were deaf,
but his own intensely, horribly sensitive.

It was generally at the very height of excitement in play, when he had
just been dealt a hand which he told himself, with exultation, would win
him all the money in the pool, or, perhaps at the moment when he raised
the glass to his lips, anticipating the delicious exhilaration of the
seductive peach-honey, that the unwelcome spectre would, with startling
suddenness, appear before his eyes. His face would blanch, his own voice
become almost as hoarse as the warning whisper that was in his ear, and
with trembling hand he would put down the cards or the cup and refuse to
have anything more to do with the evening's sport.

His companions at first thought these attacks the result of some
physical weakness but finally became accustomed to them and attributed
them to his "queerness."

* * * * *

Thus the youthful poet passed his year at college--dividing his time
between his dreams, his classes and his carousals. The session closed in
December. The final examinati