His life hitherto had been like some dry sponge, dusty and crackling; now it was plunged in the waters of three seas, all incomparably sweet.
He had gained his liberty, and in that process he had forgotten about himself, the self which up till now had been so intolerable a burden.

At school, and even before, when first the age of self-consciousness dawned upon him, he had seen himself as he believed others saw him--a queer, awkward, ill-made boy, slow at his work, shy with his fellows, incapable at games.

Walled up in this fortress of himself, this gloomy and forbidding fastness, he had altogether failed to find the means of access to others, both to the normal English boys among whom his path lay, and also to his teachers, who, not unnaturally, found him sullen and unresponsive.

There was no key among the rather limited bunches at their command which unlocked him, nor at home had anything been found which could fit his wards.

It had been the business of school to turn out boys of certain received types.