Very recently M.O. spent several days with Edmund, who has been married for several years.
He left children; but as they were infants, his nephew Edwy, son of Edmund, was placed on the throne.
Edmund Drake his father, was one of those clergy who devote themselves to the education of the people.
In the meantime M.O. occasionally had relations with other boys, but never wavered in his real preference for Edmund.
Neither regrets anything of the past, but feels that the final outcome of their earlier relation has been good. Edmund's beauty is still pronounced, and is remarked by others.
In the same way, also, it is Shakespeare alone who speaks for his villains: Richard, Edmund, Iago, Macbeth, expressing for them those vicious feelings which villains never express.
He lay for hours dreaming of this, and inventing thrilling situations. Suddenly, at church, he became acquainted with the very youth, Edmund, who seemed to satisfy all his longings.
Then M.O. and Edmund went to college at different places, but they met in vacations and wrote frequent and ardent love-letters. Both had genuine attacks of love-sickness and of jealousy.
By all the others it was mentioned with regret; and his merits honoured with due gradation of feeling--from the sincerity of Edmund's too partial regard, to the unconcern of his mother speaking entirely by rote.
After the first year at college, Edmund transferred to another school farther away from M.O. and the opportunities for meeting became rarer, but their affection was maintained and the intercourse resumed whenever it was possible.