Laertes considers the question, sitting back with his hands sinking into the mossy ground. "When I was sixteen," he says slowly, "I held myself apart from boys of mine own age. In part because I was awakening to new desire, which I was at great pains to conceal--but in greater part because I had been trained since mine earliest youth to do nothing foolish or immoderate that might stain my father's reputation. And so I fear I missed much of what other boys learned, in each other's company. Now, although I've passed thirty years, a part of me that was held frozen at sixteen is beginning to quicken and thaw ... and I think it may be the same for thee, as well. Twenty-four thou mayest be, but that part of thee that was sixteen still craves fulfillment."
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