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222 left the room. She would have liked to take the books with her, but dared not; however, that evening at dinner she plucked up courage and said:

"Addie, Mr. Brauws was saying something about the French Revolution the other day; and I felt so stupid at being so ignorant on the subject. Have you any books about it?"

Yes, he had this book and that book, in fact he had always been attracted by that period and had collected as many books upon it as his scanty pocket-money permitted. He would bring them to her after dinner. And she acquired a sort of passion for reading and learning. She indulged it almost hastily, feverishly, without any method, as though nervously anxious to make up for the deficiencies of her own education. And at the same time she was frightened lest other people—even Van der Welcke and Addie—should notice that fevered haste; and she devoured book after book with studied cunning, sometimes turning the pages over hurriedly, feverishly, then again reading more attentively, but never leaving the books about, always replacing them on her boy's shelves, or returning them to Brauws and Paul when they had been borrowed from them, or carefully putting away those which she had bought herself, so that her room apparently remained the same, without the confusion and untidiness of a lot of books. Her reading was a strange medley: a volume of Quack's Socialists, which Brauws lent her;