Maurice

by E.M. Forster

Every man has somewhere about him some belief for which he’d die. Only isn’t it improbable that your parents and guardians told it to you? If there is one won’t it be part of your own flesh and spirit? Show me that.

New worlds broke loose in him at this, and he saw from the vastness of the ruin what ecstasy he had lost, what a communion.

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.

They looked at one another for a moment before beginning new lives. “What an ending,” he sobbed, “what an ending.”

He was practically alone, and why should he go on living? There was really no reason, yet he had a dreary feeling he should, because he had not got Death either; she, like Love, had glanced at him for a minute, then turned away, and left him to “play the game”.

“Nothing’s the same for anyone. That’s why life’s this Hell, if you do a thing you’re damned, and if you don’t you’re damned—”

Love had failed. Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things.

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.

“You care for me a little bit, I do think,” he admitted, “but I can’t hang all my life on a little bit.

I was yours once till death if you’d cared to keep me,