The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the other:
Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,
Quando leggemmo il disiato riso
Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
La bocca mi baciò 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 smelt 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 £35 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 £50...."
The assistant smiled in a superior way.