tilts the book to me but, jealously, will not let me take it. ''Not yet not yet! Ah, see this one, also. Black-letter; the titles, look, picked out in red. The capitals flowered, the margin as broad as the text. What extravagance! And this! Plain board; but see here, the frontispiece''— the picture is of a lady reclined on a couch, a gentleman beside her, his member bare and crimson at the tip—''done after Borel, most rare. I had this as a young man from a stall at Liverpool, for a shilling. I should not part with it now, for fifty pounds.—Come, come!'' He has seen me blush. ''No schoolgirl modesty here! Did I bring you to my house, and teach you the ways of my collection, to see you colour? Well, no more of that. Here is work, not leisure. You will soon forget the substance, in the scrutiny of the form.''
So he says to me, many times. I do not believe him. I am thirteen. The books fill me, at first, with a kind of horror: for it seems a frightful thing, that children, in becoming women and men, should do as they describe—get lusts, grow secret limbs and cavities, be prone to fevers, to crises, seek nothing but the endless joining together of smarting flesh. I imagine my mouth, stopped up with kisses. I imagine the parting of my legs. I imagine myself fingered and pierced ... I am thirteen, as I have said. The fear gives way to restlessness: I begin to lie each night at Barbara''s side, wakeful while she sleeps on; one time I put back the blanket to study the curve of her breast. Then I take to watching her as she bathes and dresses. Her legs—that I know from my uncle''s books should be smooth—are dark with hair; the place between them—which I know should be neat, and fair—darkest of all. That troubles me. Then at last, one day, she catches me gazing. ''What are you looking at?'' she says. ''Your cunt,'' I answer. ''Why is it so black?'' She starts away from me as if in horror, lets her skirt fall, puts her hands before her breast. Her cheek flares crimson. ''Oh!'' she cries. ''I never did! Where did you learn such words?'' ''From my uncle,'' I say.