in memoriam alternative future where roseveare's wife was pregnant when he died, and gives birth to their child but dies in childbirth, and gaunt and ellwood become its guardians for while, because his brothers all died too. they have no clue what to do with a young ward until maud comes to help, and its this small boy who is the spitting image of roseveare, and ellwood can't stand it really, but he can't bear to see the child leave when he eventually finds a home with another family, with a mother and a father in england, and ellwood and gaunt are left with a strange grief of another kind for this little period of their life that left them floundering but full of love. they go back to their life as pretend bachelors, and find peace in it, but it leaves them thinking of what they might have gone through had they married women and never found each other, never had the courage to pursue a life together (and this also helps ellwood on his road to recovery as a lapsed misogynist)
