Two men can defy the world.

He did not want to speak to his lover or to hear his voice or to touch him—all that part was over—only to recapture his image before it vanished for ever.

He would not—and this was the test—pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.

“Mother, who toom?” “You will say ‘Who toom’ as a joke too often.”

Then they wrote every day and for all their care created new images in each other’s hearts.

Clive knew that ecstasy cannot last, but can carve a channel for something lasting, and he contrived a relation that proved permanent.

The girls were damned ugly,

Clive had postponed it. Clive had influenced him,

He was not yet free of Clive and never would be until something greater intervened.