"Let me begin this way," he said. "There are exactly six pieces in that
house that will prevent my being honest so long as they are not mine. I
am not unmindful of your succor, Major. I'll prove that to you if you
look me up in town,--send me a wire and a room shall be waiting for
you,--and I am enraptured by that small and lively brown lady.
Nevertheless I shall remain a collector and, humanly speaking, an
ingrate, a wolf, a caitiff, until those six articles are mine. Make them
mine, and for the remainder of that stuff you shall have the benefit of
an experience that has been of incredible cost. Accept my figure, and I
promise you as man to man to de-Cohenize myself utterly."
"They are yours," I said--"what are they and what is the figure?
Clem--Mr. Price's glass."
"There--you disarm me. One bit of haggling or hesitation might have
hardened me even now; the serpent within me would have lifted its head
and struck. But you have saved yourself--and very well for that! The
articles are those six ball-and-claw-foot chairs with violin backs. I
will pay fifty dollars apiece for those. Remember--it is the voice of
Cohen. The chairs are worth more--some day they'll fetch twice that;
but, really, I must throw a sop to that collector-Cerberus within me.
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