He read of the anatomical differences between men and women. He read
about the mechanism of love. He read about the mysteries of procreation.
All of it was startlingly new to him, and yet he read with a sense of
always having known it. He read with absolute acceptance, without a
possibility of doubt.
It seemed a genuine revelation that must render all future questioning
futile. And yet he seemed to know no more when he had finished than he
knew before he started. It remained outside of himself, a structure of
air, a series of shadowgraphs, and the craving within him burned as
passionately as ever.
From now on he could grasp the points of the stories told by the boys at
school, and he would know what Johan was hinting at in his boast about
the secret doings of that attic. But of the reality of the thing he knew
as little as before. In fact, the principal lesson brought home by his
reading was that here he found himself in the presence of something that
could not be learned out of books.
To begin with he did not go beyond the first part of the book. This he
read over and over again. When at last he was sated with what that part
had to give, a subtle chemical change had taken place in his mental
make-up, one might say. It was not caused by any facts conveyed by the
book.
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