Now is my heart with love so laden
That it would sacrifice its life
If you, who, though still child-maiden,
Refused to join with me as wife—
Though I must wait with patient mien
Until your years have reached thirteen,
Which age (pace the superstitious)
Shall bring my heart the joy it wishes.

Your hyacinth hair and liquid eyes
Possess my heart and haunt my dreams.
Your face becalms me when I rise
From nightmares that evoke my screams.

And thus our lives are intertwined
Like heart-veins dark-incarnadined.
You shall be bride—I shall be groom—
Until Death seals us in the tomb.

By the time this composition was completed, the tempest had abated. Night had given way to dawn, and the first watery rays of daylight were leaking through the translucent panes of my window. Returning to my bedchamber, I made my way to the washstand and, after performing my ritual ablutions, dressed in my customary garb—black frockcoat, black waistcoat, black trousers, black cravat.

Regarding my face in my shaving-glass, I took note of the doleful alterations which that dreary night of disquietude had wrought upon my features. Suffusing my complexion was a dull yet distinctly unwholesome pallor. Dark lines extended downward from my nostrils, past the corners of my mouth, to the border of my chin. Beneath each of my eyes depended a large, fleshy pouch whose livid tint appeared all the more striking in contrast to the singularly anaemic coloration of my skin. My eyes themselves possessed an anomalous tincture, the pale orbs mottled by a fine, crimson webwork of ruptured capillaries.

Notwithstanding these signs of bodily fatigue and excessive—even morbid—cerebration, there could be seen in the cast of my features—in the set of my Ups and the expression emanating from my eyes—a marked constancy of purpose. Such a look could not fail to impress my opponent with the realization that he was facing no commonplace foe, but rather a being possessed of the same unyielding spirit displayed, in ancient times, when David defeated the Philistine champion Goliath, or when Leonidas, warrior-king of the Spartans, made his celebrated stand at Thermopylae.

Emerging from my bedchamber, I could hear, issuing from our little kitchen, the comforting sounds of my tireless Muddy, who arose at every daybreak to attend, with religious regularity, to her matinal chores. A welcoming warmth radiated from the cooking stove upon whose surface stood a pan of simmering water. Approaching Muddy from behind, I clutched her fondly by the shoulders, at which gesture she gave a little jump and emitted a sharp gasp.

“Oh, Eddie,” she said, turning to face me, one hand clutching at the bosom of her housedress. “You gave me quite a start.”

“Where is Virginia?” I inquired after planting a filial kiss upon my aunt’s ruddy cheek.

“Still abed.”

“She sleeps like the dead,” I remarked with a heartfelt sigh. “It is the repose of the innocent.”