lucidity made suffering unendurable, he had still
the assurance that his genius would never suffer at her hands. For did
she not know that God gives the heart of a poet to be as fuel to his
genius, for ever consumed and inconsumable? That of all his passions
his love is the nearest akin to the divine fire? She of all women
would never deny him the eternal right to utterance.

Neither could she well find fault with the manner of it. He went
through the sonnets again, trying to read them with her woman's eyes.
There was nothing, nothing, not an image, not a word that could
offend. Here was no "flaming orgy of individuality." He had chosen
purposely the consecrated form that pledged him to perfection, bound
him to a magnificent restraint.

There still remained the scruple as to the propriety of choosing this
precise moment for his gift. It was over-ridden by the invincible
desire to give, the torturing curiosity to know how she would take it.

One more last scruple, easily disposed of. In all this there was no
disloyalty to the woman he was going to make his wife. For the Sonnets
belonged to the past in which she had no part, and to the future which
concerned her even less.

The next day, then, at about five o'clock, the time at which Lucia had
told him she would be free, he came to her, bringing his gift with
him.

Lucia's face gladdened when she saw the manuscript in his hand; for
though they had discussed very freely what he had done once, he had
been rather sadly silent, she thought, as to what he was doing now. He
had seemed to her anxious to avoid any question on the subject. She
had wondered whether his genius had been much affected by his other
work; and had been half afraid to ask lest she should learn that it
was dead, destroyed by journalism. She had heard so much of the perils
of that career, that she had begun to regret her part in helping him
to it. So that her glance as it lighted on the gift was, he thought,
propitious.

He drew up his chair near her (he had not to wait for any invitation
to do that now), and she noticed the trembling of his hands as he
spread the manuscript on his knees. He had always been nervous in
approaching the subject of his poems, and she said to herself, "Has he
not got over that?"

Apparently he had not got over it; for he sat there for several
perceptible moments sunk in the low chair beside her, saying nothing,
only curling and uncurling the sheets with the same nervous