The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he explained.

The theory that the tablemounts were decapitated by great oscillations of sea level, owing to water becoming locked up in ice caps or to some other cause, seems to be definitely ruled out, since the peaks are not concordant.

At noon, when by the forest’s edge He lay beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart,—he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!

This sense of idealism, however troubled (as in The Living End) by homophobia and AIDS, challenges gay people to imagine a way to build their lives without seeking validation from the dominant social order, or as archqueen Quentin Crisp said somewhere, “Never mind keeping up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level—it’s cheaper.”