agent and Harriet. I saw Harriet lift one hand and drop it hopelessly.
She thought I was captured at last. I was past saving. And as I looked
at the agent I saw "grim conquest glowing in his eye!" So I sat down not
a little embarrassed by my exhibition--when I had intended to be
self-poised.

"You like it, don't you?" said Mr. Dixon unctuously.

"I don't see," I said earnestly, "how you can afford to sell such
things as this so cheap."

"They _are_ cheap," he admitted regretfully. I suppose he wished he had
tried me with the half-morocco.

"They are priceless," I said, "absolutely priceless. If you were the
only man in the world who had that poem, I think I would deed you my
farm for it."

Mr. Dixon proceeded, as though it were all settled, to get out his black
order book and open it briskly for business. He drew his fountain pen,
capped it, and looked up at me expectantly. My feet actually seemed
slipping into some irresistible whirlpool. How well he understood
practical psychology! I struggled within myself, fearing engulfment: I
was all but lost.

"Shall I deliver the set at once," he said, "or can you wait until the
first of February?"

At that critical moment a floating spar of an idea swept my way and I
seized upon it as the last hope of the lost.