In fact, Rose was not at the time in question engaged in the love affair which Miss Brodie thought she was, but it seemed so, and Rose was famous for sex. But in her mere eleventh year, on the winter’s walk, Rose had not yet advanced far enough into her prime to speak of sex except by veiled allusion, as when she said of her warrior lover, ‘He was a pure man’, or when she read from James Hogg’s Poem ‘Bonnie Kilmeny’,

‘Kilmeny was as pure as pure could be’

and added, ‘Which is to say, she not go to the glen in order to mix with men.’