"No one can ever know how good you have been to me, what it has meant to me, and I thank you." She bowed her head, and again he restrained the impulse to gather her close up in his arms.

When she looked up he was holding something toward her in the palm of his hand.

It was a little Bible, worn and frayed at the edges, pathetic in its raggedness.
"A long time ago, my mother gave me this Bible," he said.

"She told me that as long as I carried it, and believed in it, no harm could come to me, and I guess she was right.

It was her first Bible, and mine.