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Rh. After supper he read out loud to the whole family, or instructed them in talking to them. Henrietta would listen with a fervor not free from uneasiness. When he talked of world issues and of the condition of humanity the young girl was much more impressed by the excitement, the restlessness and the revolt that talk betrayed, than by the actual sense of his objurgations. With the second-sight of an affectionate feminine soul, she guessed him to be fundamentally sad and troubled, and the more he showed solicitude for the unfortunates, the suffering and the misguided, the more did she become frankly absorbed in him, having a presentiment that among all this world's wretched people this one had the greatest need for charity.

On the other hand, when he was with her, the train of his thought took a less harassing turn. Under the protecting caress of her great blue eyes, ingenuously fixed upon him, he saw only the present quietude, the loyal ambience, and the smile of life. He ceased to look for difficulties where there were none, and doomed his stormy speculations to silence.

Formerly, at the factory, the pupils of Gina's eyes had injected a traitorous liquid under his skin; he could not contain himself, became bad, dreamed of ruin and reprisals, a rising of the humble and a revolt of the servile, after which he would have seized, as part of his booty, the proud and scornful patrician girl and subdued her to the outrages of his burning desire. It was as much due to bitterness toward Gina as to hate of the directors and capitalists that he had turned to the exploited. He was going to descend to the subversive pariahs when he met proletarians who were reconciled to their lot. He became a kind of