Read G. for Free Online Page B

associated for him with the eminent nature of his own body (like suddenly being aware of his own warmth), with pride—for he rides well and his uncle praises him, with the hair of his pony’s mane and with his anticipation of a man’s world.
    He knows some of the terms of this world but he believes that all of them refer to something which nobody ever mentions. He assumes that the men around him have, for their own reasons, a need for secrecy comparable to his own. When he enters their world—and follows Captain Elwes’ hounds—he will learn their secrets.
MISS HELEN
    Between the ages of two and five the boy has three governesses. The last one is called Miss Helen.
    In the schoolroom in the wing of the farm furthest from the kitchen and the yard, there are no men; there is only the boy. He is sitting at the high desk, his feet dangling in the air, reading out loud. She is in an armchair which she has turned round so that she can gaze out of the window.
    When it seems that her attention is entirely taken up by what she can see through the window, he deliberately makes a mistake so as to re-attract her attention. Sometimes his mistakes are unintentional.
    … all thrush summer the birds were singing.
    Thrush?
    Yes, the speckly bird.
    Thrush summer?
    She gets up from the chair, smooths the front of her dress where itis pleated round her tiny waist and comes behind him to look at the book.
    All through summer. Thrush indeed! OUGH not RUSH .
    She laughs. He laughs and in laughing throws his head back against her dress.
    It was a good mistake, a thrush is a sort of bird.
    But not a sort of preposition.
    Falling in love at five or six, although rare, is the same as falling in love at fifty. One may interpret one’s feelings differently, the outcome may be different, but the state of feeling and of being is the same.
    A pre-condition is necessary for a five-year-old boy to fall in love. He must have lost his parents or, at least, lost any close contact with them, and no foster-parents should have taken their place. Similarly, he must have no close friends or brothers or sisters. Then he is eligible.
    Being in love is an elaborate state of anticipation for the continual exchanging of certain kinds of gifts. The gifts can range from a glance to the offering of the entire self. But the gifts must be gifts: they cannot be claimed. One has no rights as a lover—except the right to anticipate what the other wishes to give. Most children are surrounded by their rights (their right to indulgence, to consolation, etc.): and so they do not and cannot fall in love. But if a child—as a result of circumstances—comes to realize that such rights as he does enjoy are not fundamental, if he has recognized, however inarticulately, that happiness is not something that can be assured and promised but is something that each has to try to find for himself, if he is aware of being essentially alone, then he may find himself anticipating pure, gratuitous and continual gifts offered by another and the state of that anticipation is the state of being in love. You may ask: but what does he have to offer in exchange? The boy, like a man, offers himself—not altogether impossibly. What is impossible, or at least very improbable, is that his beloved will ever recognize either his offer or his anticipation for what they are.
    What—he asks—is a preposition?
    A preposition is part of grammar. It’s always in front of a noun and it tells you what the noun is doing.
    But—you protest (as she too would protest, with vaguer words)—a boy of five is not sexually developed and the basis of falling in love is sexual.
    Every morning he hears her washing in her bedroom. Every morning he considers entering her room and surprising her. He could enter on the excuse of being frightened or of some fabricated need, but to do so would be to appeal, to claim as a child: and because he is in love with her, his lover’s pride prevents this.
    At night in bed, alone,