He looked full in her face. "I don't know anywhere to go for strength but out of one's naked human heart," he said.
She shrank from the rigor of this with a qualm of actual fear. "I think I must have something else," she told him wildly.
"I don't know," he returned. "I don't know at all about that. I'm no mystic. I can't help you there, dear. But I know, as well as I know anything on earth, that anything that's worth having in anybody's life, his parent-hood, his marriage, his love, his ambition, can stand any honest challenge it can be put to. If it can't, it's not valid and ought to be changed or discarded." His gaze on her was immeasurably steady.
She longed unspeakably for something else from him, some warming, comforting assurance of help, some heartening, stimulating encouragement along that stark, bleak way.
Somehow they were standing up now, both pale, looking profoundly into each other's eyes. Something almost palpable, of which not a word had been spoken aloud, came and stood there between them, and through it they still looked at each other. They had left words far behind now, in the fierce velocity of their thoughts.
And yet with the almost physical unity of their years of life together, each knew the other's thoughts.
She flung herself against him as though she had cried out to him. He put his arms strongly, tenderly about her, as though he had answered.
With no words she had cried out, silently, desperately to him, "Hold me! Hold me!"
And with no words, he had answered, silently, desperately, "No one can hold you but yourself."