I was yours once till death if you cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now--I can't hang about whining for ever--and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked and attend to your own happiness?

The night before, Belle had stayed up past her bedtime, making a few changes to her doll with her father's tools. She couldn't help it. Inspiration had struck. Her father always told her that when inspiration strikes, you must grab it.

Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world.

The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.

Standing each by his monster, they looked at each other, and smiled

He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know—but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come—I didn't know.""You can't help yourself now. You must come.""I don't want to help myself.""Come then."He did come. He flung down all the barriers—not at once, for he did not live in a house that can be destroyed in a day.

I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants.

Too late... everything's always too late.

Accursed! Accursed! You shall be accursed to the thirteenth generation!

-while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart, and his arms full of air.

Conse­quently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.

Papa! You painted my nose!""I certainly did," her father said."But why?" Belle tried to see the purple dot on her face.Maurice grinned. "Because that mark makes you even more beautiful. Different and special from the inside out, just like your fantastic doll. And just like your mother, who you look and act more like every day."Belle eyed her father suspiciously. "A purple mark does all that?""Yes. Because it's yours and only yours," Maurice said.