And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy,
and mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing form, day
after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her
mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these
shadows of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more
perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that
her smile was like her mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered
at its too perfect identity, that her eyes were like Morella's I could
endure; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths of my
soul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. And in the
contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken
hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in
the sad musical tones of her speech, and above all- oh, above all, in
the phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and
the living, I found food for consuming thought and horror, for a
worm that would not die.
Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter
remained nameless upon the earth.
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