In this environment there is nothing unnatural about the attraction exercised by a small boy over an elder one. A small boy is the nearest approach possible to the feminine ideal. Indeed a small boy at a Public School has many of the characteristics that a man would hope and expect to find in a woman. He is small, weak, and stands in need of protection. He is remote as a woman is, in that he moves in a different circle of school life, with different friends, different troubles, different ambitions. He is an undiscovered country. The emotion experienced is genuine, and usually takes the elder boy by surprise. In a man's love for a woman there is often a degree of premeditation. A man looks at a woman and wonders if he could ever come to fall in love with her. As he walks homewards from her drawing-room he asks himself whether or not he is in love with her. He analyses his emotions; very often he persuades himself he is in love with her when in reality he is not. Either way he is prepared. But the schoolboy is taken off his guard. He has not realised it is possible that he should fall in love with another boy. He has no previous experience which will enable him to recognise the symptoms. He has heard older boys spoken of as being 'keen' on some one or other, but he has associated such an assertion with the references in sermons to the corruption of a young mind. He does not, therefore, know what is happening when he finds himself becoming increasingly interested in some quite small boy. He has noticed him playing a plucky game on the Lower and has congratulated him. They have happened to meet on the way up from hall and have walked across together to the studies. They have smiled when they passed each other as they changed from one class-room to another in break. The elder boy is surprised: he is still more surprised when he finds himself frequently walking into the smaller boy's study on no very necessary errand, to borrow a book he does not want or to return a book he has not borrowed; and that he should stop there to talk for an indefinite period. The day on which he has not seen or spoken to his small friend is empty for him. He does not understand his increasing wish for the company of an admittedly inferior person. But it is all very delightful. He is desperately anxious to appear in his best light. He makes strenuous, and often successful, efforts to abandon certain habits he had contracted. He may even work harder in form, and certainly he will make superhuman efforts on the football field, feeling that success will render him more attractive. He wonders what the small boy thinks of him, and persuades one whose social position lies midway between the two of them to make inquiries. The growing intimacy is a rich enchantment. He becomes curious, and, in a way, jealous of the life that his friend is leading; their standards, their environment, their friends are so different. He knows instinctively that one has more in