Bellis had stood still and read the names again and again, and felt suddenly claustrophobic. She was encased in stolen books, buried in them as if in dirt. The thought of the countless hundreds of thousands of names that surrounded her, vainly scrawled in top right-hand corners—the weight of all that ignored ink, the endless proclamations that this is mine this is mine, every one of them snubbed simply and imperiously—took Bellis’ breath from her chest. The ease with which those little commands were broken. She felt as if all around her, morose ghosts were milling, unable to accept that the
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