And there in the Secret Chamber he bound her to him by an indestructible chain, the chain of the Nine and Twenty Sonnets.

The question was what should he do with it now that it was made?  To dedicate twenty-nine sonnets to Lucia was one thing, to print them was another.  If it was inevitable that he should thus reveal himself after the manner of poets, it was also inevitable that she should regard a public declaration as an insult rather than an honour.  And he himself shrank from exposing so sacred a thing to the pollution and violence of publicity.  Therefore he took each sonnet as it was written, and hid it in a drawer.  But he was not without prescience of their ultimate value, and after all this method of disposal seemed to him somehow unsatisfactory.  So he determined that he would leave the manuscript to Lucia in his will, to be afterwards dealt with as she judged best, whether she chose to publish or to burn.  In the former case the proceeds might be regarded as partial payment of a debt.

And so two years passed and it was Spring again.

CHAPTER XLV

There are many ways of achieving distinction, but few are more effectual than a steady habit of punctuality.  By this you may shine even in the appalling gloom of the underground railway.  Among all the women who wait every morning for the City trains at Gower Street Station, there was none more conspicuously punctual than Miss Flossie Walker.  The early clerk who travelled citywards was always sure of seeing that little figure on the same spot at the same moment, provided he himself were punctual and kept a sharp look-out.  This you may be sure he took good care to do.  To look at Flossie once was to look again and yet again.  And he was fortunate indeed if his route lay between Moorgate Street Station and the Bank, for then he had the pleasure of seeing her sharply threading her way among the traffic, if that can be said of anything so soft and round as Flossie.

If Flossie’s figure was small and round, her face was somewhat large, a perfect oval moulded in the subtlest curves, smooth and white moreover, with a tinge of ivory sallow towards the roots of her black hair.  Wonderful hair was Flossie’s.  In those days she parted it in the middle and waved it symmetrically on either side of her low forehead; she brought it over her ears, covering all but the tips and the delicate pink lobes; she coiled it at the back in an elaborate spiral and twisted it into innumerable little curls about the nape of her neck.  Unfortunately that neck was rather short; but she wore low collars which made the most of it.  And then Flossie’s features were so very correct.  She had a correct little nose, neither straight nor aquiline, but a distracting mixture of both, and a correct little mouth, so correct and so small that you wondered how it managed to display so many white teeth in one diminutive smile.  Flossie’s eyes were not as her mouth; they were large, full-lidded, long-lashed, and blacker than her hair.  No wonder if the poor clerk who passed her on her way to and fro in the City rejoiced as they looked up at him.  She might be going to her work as he to his, but what with her bright eyes and her blue ribbons, she looked the very genius of holiday as she went.