be very wicked. I discovered that there were two ways of
looking at a young woman, and two ways of thinking about her. I
discovered that it was lawful to have some kinds of appetite, and to
take pleasure in food, exercise, sleep, warmth, cold water, hot water,
the smell of flowers, and quite unlawful so much as to think of, or to
admit to myself the existence of other kinds of appetite. I discovered,
in fact, that love was a shameful thing, that if one was in love one
concealed it from the world, and, above all the world, from the object
of one's love. The conviction was probably instinctive, for one is not
the descendant of puritans for nothing; but the discovery of it is
another matter. Attendance at school and the continuous reading of
romance were partly responsible for that; physical development clinched
the affair, I was in all respects mature at thirteen, though my courage
(to use the word in Chaucer's sense) was not equal to my ability. I had
more than usual diffidence against me, more than usual reserve; and
self-consciousness, from which I have only lately escaped, grew upon me
hand in hand with experience.

But being now become a day-scholar at the Grammar School, and thrown
whether I would or not among other boys of my own age, I sank my
recondite self deeply under the folds of my quickened senses. I became
aware of a world which was not his world at all. I watched, I heard, I
judged, I studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I shared
their own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipher
among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my
school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or
inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I
was lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head I
captured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years I
journeyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-mile
walks and a couple of train journeys to be got through in all weathers
and all conditions of light. I saw little or nothing of my
school-fellows out of hours, and lived all my play-time, if you can so
call it, intensely alone with the people of my imagination--to whose
number I could now add gleanings from the Grammar School.

I don't claim objective reality for any of these; I am sure that they
were of my own making. Though unseen beings throng round us all,
though as a child I had been conscious of t