"Keep your silence," said he, in a voice unrecognizable, and as if a
wild beast, half-glutted, should speak, "and I keep her! She is in my
power. Mine, and you know what that means. Mine," and he bent toward me,
"_body and--soul_. To use, to blast, to destroy, to tear piecemeal,--as
I will do, so help me God! unless you meet my condition." And extending
his hand, he drew aside the black veil, and my eye lay on the face of
Lenore, thin and white as the familiar faces of corpses, and utterly
insensible in swoon.

All, that mortal horror stops my pulse! Was I wrong? Why not have borne
that, too? Had she loved me, she had chosen it, chosen it rather. And
death would have made all right!--God! why not have seized some poignard
lying there? why not have sprung upon her, have slain her? Then silence
had been simply secure. Then I could have smiled in their frustrated
faces, one keen, deep smile, and died. I was dissolved in pain, writhed
with prolonged strokes that thrilled me from head to foot, pierced as
with acute stabs, my heart seemed to forge thunderbolts to break upon my
brain,--but this agony had been spared me. They unbound me, fed me with
some stimulating cordial, gave me cold air, and I rose on my elbow a
little.

"Swear!" I said, hoarsely. "But you do not keep oaths. God help you?
Never! There must be a Hell to help you! Imprecate this, then, on
yourself! May you in your smooth white body know the torture I have
known, be racked till each bone in your skin changes place, hang
festering in chains from the wall of a living grave, make fellowship
with putridity, and lie in the pitiless dark to see all the dead who
died under your hand rise, rise and accuse you before God! And may your
little son know the deeds you have done, live the life those deeds