body cannot be in the sphere of a powerful motion without being
affected by it, so Rosalie began to move sympathetically to the
wheel but on her own axis. She moved round with the wheel but she
was not of the wheel and she never became really incorporated with
the wheel. The spokes were revolving with incredible rapidity when
she first, began to notice them and they always remained relatively
faster. There she was, sitting and watching and wondering; and the
twig grows as it is bent or as it is left to bend. She looked on
and absorbed things; and the first and by far the deepest of her
settled perceptions was that, though she was subject to all powers,
all girls and women were themselves subject to the power of all
boys and men.

Up to the age of eighteen, six years represents an enormous gulf in
the relative ages of brothers and sisters. You have only to figure
it out in the case of Rosalie to realise how far behind she was
always left, and why, though one of a family of six, she occupied
a position outside the group and was a watcher of them rather than
a sharer with them. She was four when Robert the next above her
was ten, which is a baby against a sturdy and well-developed giant;
when she was eight Robert was fourteen, which is a greater gulf
than the first; when she was twelve Robert was eighteen which,
from eighteen's point of view, is as the difference between an aged
man and an infant; and when she was sixteen Robert was twenty-two,
which is a schoolgirl against one of the oldest and most experienced
periods of life. She came in as a new little girl in a big school;
when she had been there eight years--counting from four, when first
she was conscious of arrival--she was still relatively the same:
there she was, twelve, with Robert eighteen and the others twenty,
twenty-two, twenty-four and twenty-six.