He was happy--very, very happy, but he desired to be happier still. The simple, beautiful words of the old, old rite uttered in the dim, empty church had woven an invisible bond between him and the maiden whom he loved to call in his heart his wife though the time when he could claim her before the world was not yet. The miracle that this bond wrought in him was a revelation to him. Was the priest a wizard? Did the words of the ancient rite possess any intrinsic power of enchantment undreamed of by the uninitiated? He had not believed it possible for mortal to love more wholly--more madly than he had loved the little Virginia before that sacred ceremony, but after it he knew there were heights of love of which he had not hitherto had a glimpse. Just the right to say to his heart "She is my own--my wife--" made her tenfold more precious than she had ever been before, but it also made the separation tenfold harder to bear--made it beyond his power to bear! The Valley of the Many-Colored Grass had been dissolved--the spell that had brought it into being broken, by the separation, and he longed with a longing that was as hunger and thirst to reconstruct this magical world in which he and his Virginia dwelt apart with her who was mother to them both, in Richmond. And so, poor as he was, he arranged to bring Virginia and Mother Clemm to Richmond and establish them in a boarding house where he could see them often and wait with better grace the still happier day of making his marriage public. The day came more speedily than they had let themselves hope. The popularity of the _Messenger_ and the fame of its assistant editor had grown with leaps and bounds. The new year brought the welcome gift of promotion to full editorship, with an increase of salary. With the opening spring began plans for the divulging of the great secret--for public acknowledgment of the marriage. But how was it to be done?--That was the question! Edgar Poe knew too well the disapproval with which the world regarded secret marriages--with which he himself regarded them, ordinarily. His sense of refinement of fitness, of the sacredness of the marriage tie, revolted from the very idea. In what fashion then, could he and his little bride proclaim their secret that would not do violence to their own taste or set a buzz of gossip going? That the horrid lips of gossip should so much as breathe the name of his Virginia--that Mrs. Grundy should dare shrug her decorous shoulders, if ever so slightly, at mention of that sacred name--. The bare suggestion was intolerable!