The years, his troubles, and his illness, had wrought a great change in him--outwardly. The dark ringlets that framed his face were still untouched with rime, and the dark grey eyes were as vivid, as ever-varying in expression as before, but the large brow wore a furrow and over it and the clear-cut features and the emaciated cheeks was a settled pallor. The face was still very beautiful, but in repose it was melancholy and about the mouth there was a touch of bitterness. The illumining smile still flashed out at times, and filled all his countenance with sweetness and light--but it was rarer than formerly. He had many reasons for being happy--for being thankful. The genius with which he was conscious he was endowed in larger measure than others of his generation was being recognized. He had fame--growing fame--and money enough for his needs. He had what was as necessary to his soul as meat was to his body--the love of a woman who understood him in all his moods and who was beautiful enough in mind and in body and pure enough in spirit for him to worship as well as to love--to satisfy his soul as well as his senses. And this woman, at the very moment when he thought himself about to lose her forever, had been given back to him--given back clothed upon with a finer a more exquisite beauty than she had possessed before. He had indeed found the end of the rainbow, but what did it amount to? He was dissatisfied--not with what life was giving him, but with what he was doing with his life. At the moment when his cup was fairly overflowing with happiness and he should have been strongest, he had suffered himself to be led away by the Imp of the Perverse, and had spoiled all. Nothing he had ever been made to taste he told himself, was so unbearably bitter as this dissatisfaction--this disgust with self. * * * * * Yet when again the tiny crimson stream stained the sweet lips of his Virginia, and again the Angel of Death spread a dread wing for a season over the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, all his knowledge of the bitterness--the loathing--of remorse was not sufficient to make him strong for the struggle with grief and despair. Again the reason of Edgar Poe gave way before the strain, and again he fell. CHAPTER XXVII. A day when the porch was rose-embowered once more and the garden-spot a riot of color and the birds singing in the trees round about, found Mr. Graham seated at Edgar Poe's desk in the office of _Graham's Magazine_. The door behind him opened, and he raised his head from his writing and quickly glanced over his shoulder. The look of inquiry in his blue eyes instantly kindled into one of welcome. "Come in! Come in! Dr. Griswold," he exclaimed. "I am more than glad to see you! We are overwhelmed with work just now and perhaps we'll induce you to lend a hand."