Puberty was there, but not intelligence, and manhood was stealing on him, as it always must, in a trance.

Then darkness rolled up again, the darkness that is primeval but not eternal, and yields to its own painful dawn.

He had been such a man all the evening, but the old feeling came over him as soon as his mother had kissed him good night.

He knew what it was, it reminded him of nothing horrible. But he was afraid.

Who was George? Nobody- just a common servant. Mother and Ada and Kitty were far more important. But he was too little to argue this. He did not even know that when he yielded to this sorrow he overcame the spectral and fell asleep.

Having been bullied as a new boy, he bullied others when they seemed unhappy or weak, not because he was cruel but because it was the proper thing to do.

He had lost the precocious clearness of the child which transfigures and explains the universe, offering answers of miraculous insight and beauty.

Maurice's secret life can be understood now; it was part brutal, part ideal, like his dreams.

He dared not to be kind- it was not the thing- still less to express his admiration in words. And the adored one would shake him off before long, and reduce him to sulks.

All that came out of the chaos were the two feelings of beauty and tenderness that he had first felt in a dream. They grew yearly, flourishing like plants that are all leaves and show no sign of flower.