A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.

The judge arrived half an hour later with the file he had collected from his office on the way, signed several papers, had Sam sign them, the matron witness them; Josh cried, Norm cried, she cried, the judge grinned, and Timmie waved his teddy bear at the judge with a broad grin as they wheeled into the elevator. "So long!" he shouted, and when the doors closed, the judge was laughing and crying too.