The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her. - E. M. Forster

I don't know. I've come to tell you what I did.' Yes, that was the reason of his visit. It was the closing of a book that would never be read again, and better close such a book than leave it lying about to get dirtied. The volume of their past must be restored to its shelf, and here, here was the place, amid darkness and perishing flowers. He owed it to Alec also. He could suffer no mixing of the old with the new. All compromise was perilous, because furtive, and, having finished his confession, he must disappear from the world that had brought him up.

The ethereal past had blinded him, and the highest happiness he could dream was a return to it.

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.