"And Americana--do you collect Americana?"

Selden stared and laughed.

"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector,
you see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am
fond of."

She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I
suppose?"

"I should fancy so--except to the historian. But your real
collector values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the
buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night--old Jefferson
Gryce certainly didn't."

She was listening with keen attention. "And yet they fetch
fabulous prices, don't they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot
for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read!
And I suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians
either?"

"No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have
to use those in the public libraries or in private collections.
It seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average
collector."

He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was
standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were
the rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was