The next day she pored over the ledger to try and trace the name and address of the subscriber who had not returned the second volume of "Debit and Credit." But, as the entries were made by the numbers and not by the titles of the books, she missed it over and over again in her excitement. So at last she was compelled to seek an outlet for her newly awakened craving in another book. Henceforward her life became an orgy of novel-reading. She went about her daily task with heavy lids and aching limbs, burnt a huge amount of midnight oil, and only escaped the suspicions of Frau Asmussen by lies and tricks. Then one dreadful winter morning it all came out. The stove in the library burning low towards midnight, Lilly's feet became cold, and she took to reading in bed with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, on the window-sill above her pillow, where there was plenty of room for it. Though this involved the bitter discomfort of having to get out of bed again in order to put back lamp and book in their places--Frau Asmussen was often now in the library earlier than Lilly--she would have rather gone out in the cold street in her nightgown than have sacrificed those dearly bought extra hours. So it came about that one morning she awoke in a fright to behold Frau Asmussen, already dressed, dangling a black strap over her white nightgown, while the lamp, which Lilly had secretly refilled at one o'clock, still burned on the window-sill. She had never in her life before been whipped, and at first hardly grasped what was going to happen, when Frau Asmussen leapt as nimbly as her corpulence would permit on to the counterpane over the bedrail, and crouching there like some fat old plucked hen, began to belabour her over the ears with the strap. A bad time now began for Lilly. What was the good of being sincerely repentant, and swearing to herself and to Frau Asmussen that she would not do it again? The new craze so intoxicated her, she was so absorbed with the new, beautiful imaginary world in which there were no tiresome servants sent by subscribers to change books, no wet umbrellas, no missing volumes, no back numbers of magazines that refused to be found, no insipid milk puddings, and no thrashings, that, had she had a martyr's joy in renunciation, she could not have returned to her former unbroken routine. She was now so completely governed by her imagination that her actual everyday existence, with its deadly monotony and lonely hours, seemed to her an unreal dream, and her life had no reality till she opened a book and turned over its sticky pages. She was too docile and unresisting to attempt to justify this passion even in her own eyes. It was wrong, she knew, to feed her mind on this heaven-sent food; but she could not help it.