"Yes," I answered sadly.
"Then maybe it won't happen," he remarked to the ceiling.
"What makes you say that?" I caught him up.
"Don't know," he replied in his carefully lazy tone that he assumed when he wished to sound oracular. "Just a feeling—that you deserve something, a good deal—worse than marriage." Then abruptly sitting up in his chair and pulling a thin volume out of his pocket, "Look at this," he muttered.
I took the vellum-bound book and opened it.
"An Elzevir 'Horace'!" I exclaimed. "Where did you get it?" All the rest of the world and all my cares thinned to insignificance before this treasure.
"A plutocratic book collector living in a mausoleum on Fifth Avenue has just given it to me," he replied. "It's a duplicate. He has another and a better one of the same date. D'you value it any at all?"
"Value it!" I cried, as my fingers caressed it. "Why, certainly I value it. It is a perfectly genuine Elzevir—the great Louis himself printed this at Leyden. It is not what you would call a tall copy, and binders have sacrilegiously spoiled an originally fine broad margin. It's not perfect. But it's a splendid specimen of early printing, with title page and colophon intact. It's a beauty!"
"You beat the devil," murmured Dibdin in his beard. "You can be enthusiastic about some things, that's clear. Anyway, the book is yours," he concluded. "I have no use for it."
"You don't mean it!" I exulted incredulously. "I am simply delighted, Dibdin, tickled pink, as you would say! I have long wanted the Elzevir 'Horace.' I haven't a single Elzevir to compare with this. Think of this coming out of the blue!" And in my foolish way I fell to gloating over the thin, musty little volume, examining the worm drills, holding it up to the light for watermarks in the gray paper and, in general, I suppose, behaving like an imbecile.