"Take this," said Kwitoff. "Carry it under your cloak. Let no one see it."
"What is it?" asked Serge, trembling in spite of himself.
"It is Caldwell's Pragmatism," said the brothers.
"Is it forbidden?" asked Serge.
The brothers looked at him.
"It is death to read it," they said.
After that Serge came each day and got books from Halfoff and Kwitoff. At night he read them. They fired his brain. All of them were forbidden books. No one in Russia might read them. Serge read Hamblin Smith's Algebra. He read it all through from cover to cover feverishly. He read Murray's Calculus. It set his brain on fire. "Can this be true?" he asked.
The books opened a new world to Serge.
The brothers often watched him as he read.
"Shall we tell him everything?" said Halfoff.