It was Alec Waugh's accusation that Sherborne provided a training in – metaphorically speaking – using two halves of the brain independently. 'Thinking', or rather official thinking, went on in one hemisphere, and ordinary life in the other. It was not hypocrisy: it was that no one in his senses would confuse the two worlds. It worked very well, and only went wrong when something happened to bridge the gap. Then, as Waugh said with some feeling, the real crime was to be found out.

艾力克指责说，舍尔伯尼这个地方，为口是心非提供了优良的训练环境，使人能够割裂地使用两半头脑。思考，或者说正式的思考，是在一个半脑中进行，而日常的生活，则用另外一个半脑。这并不是虚伪，没有一个理智的人，会把这两个世界颠倒。这样的模式运转得很好，只有在偶尔「搭错筋」时才会搞错，而在这样的时候，艾力克颇有感触地说：「你就能够看到，什么叫真正的罪恶。」

In 1927 the school had changed somewhat in its unofficial conventions. When the boys read The Loom of Youth (as of course they did, because it was forbidden) they were rather surprised at the tolerance shown, or at least suggested, of sexual friendships. When the games teams met their counterparts from other public schools, they were amazed at the latitude allowed at the rival establishments. Sherborne boys were at this period asserting a more puritanical, less cynical orthodoxy than that of Alec Waugh's 1914. Nowell Smith was no longer appealing to the independent boys to stamp out what he called 'filth'. But he had not prevented the chemical messages from flowing in four hundred budding 'living apothecary shops', and not even the cold baths had put a stop to 'dirty talk'.

1927年，学校的私下传统，稍微产生了一些改变。男孩们在读《青春织机》时（他们一定会读，因为这是禁书），他们对书里展示，至少是暗示的性关系感到相当惊奇。当他们外出参加比赛，遇到其它学校的男孩时，他们对其它学校的自由也感到很惊奇。今天的舍尔伯尼男孩们，受到的纪律束缚比艾力克所在的1914年更为严厉，但学校终归无法阻止化学信息在400个正在发育的「活药店」中流动，也无法阻止盥洗室里的脏话。

Alan Turing was a boy of independent character, but this subject presented him with a problem which was the opposite of the headmaster's. To most boys 'scandal' would be a quickly-forgotten bantering, alleviating the monotony of school. But to him, it touched the centre of life itself. For although he had surely learnt by now about the birds and the bees, his heart was to be elsewhere. The secret of how the babies were born was hidden well, but everyone knew there was a secret. He, however, had been made aware by Sherborne of a secret that in the outside world was not even supposed to exist. And it was his secret. For he was drawn by love and desire not only to 'the commonest in nature', but to his own sex.

艾伦的人格非常独立，但是脏话这件事，从另一个角度上，成了他的大难题。对于多数男孩来说，脏话只是一种玩笑，用来缓解学校的无聊。但对于艾伦来说，这些脏话，似乎触及了生命的本质。他已经知道了关于鸟类和蜜蜂的那些事，至于人类婴儿，虽然还是个秘密，但每个人都知道，存在着这样一个秘密。可是，艾伦还意识到了另一个秘密，一个其他人都不知道其存在的秘密，那就是他自己秘密。现在吸引他的，不只是「大自然最普适的道理」，还有他自己对性爱的欲望。