ci vinse,_
_Quando leggemmo il disiato riso_
_Esser baciato da cotanto amante,_
_Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,_
_La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante:_

And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged-robin which
unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve, and
which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages.
It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go
back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything
but Shakespeare went.

Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was actually wet with
the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling
himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly
and smelled like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since
nearly every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment
when he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to
recall. Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and
wrote a letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom
he had never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the
booty.

"Well?" said Guy, painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book
and shot his cuffs forward.

"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you thirty-five pounds for that
little lot."

Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.

"That's right, sir. And we don't really want them."

"But surely fifty pounds...."

The assistant smiled in a superior way.

"We must _try_ and make a _little_ profit," he murmured.

"Oh, God, you'll do that! Why, I must have paid very nearly a hundred
for them, and they were practically all second hand when I bought them."

The assistant shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm sorry, sir, but in offering you thirty-five pounds I'm offering too
much as it is. We don't really want them, you see. They're not really
any good to us."

"You're simply being damned charitable in fact," said Guy. "All right.
Give me a cheque and take them away when you like ... the sooner the
better."

He could have kicked that pile of books he had with such hardship
chosen; already they seemed to belong to this smart young assistant with
the satin tie; and he began to hate this agglomeration which had cost
him such agony, and in the end had swindled him out of L15. The
assistant sat down and wrote a cheque for Guy, took his receipt, a