And as I read it came back to me—­a scene like a picture—­the place, the time, the very feel of the hour when I first saw those lines.  Who shall say that the past does not live!  An odour will sometimes set the blood coursing in an old emotion, and a line of poetry is the resurrection and the life.  For a moment I forgot Harriet and the agent, I forgot myself, I even forgot the book on my knee—­everything but that hour in the past—­a view of shimmering hot housetops, the heat and dust and noise of an August evening in the city, the dumb weariness of it all, the loneliness, the longing for green fields; and then these great lines of Wordsworth, read for the first time, flooding in upon me: 

“Great God!  I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn: 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

When I had finished I found myself standing in my own room with one arm raised, and, I suspect, a trace of tears in my eyes—­there before the 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.

[Illustration:  ‘Did you ever see a more beautiful binding?’]

“I don’t understand,” I said, as though I had not heard his last question, “how you dare go about with all this treasure upon you.  Are you not afraid of being stopped in the road and robbed?  Why, I’ve seen the time when, if I had known you carried such things as these, such cures for sick hearts, I think I should have stopped you myself!”

“Say, you are an odd one,” said Mr. Dixon.

“Why do you sell such priceless things as these?” I asked, looking at him sharply.