But for you I should never have known what, perhaps--" He paused.
His eyes were on hers, gravely speaking what his tongue faltered to say.
She looked and looked, but did not understand.

She only saw troubled depths, lighted by a soul of kindling purpose.

"Tell me," she said, awed.
"Through you I have come to know--" He paused again.

What he was going to say, truthful though it was, must hurt her, and she had been sorely hurt already.

He put his thoughts more gently, more vaguely.
"By what happened I have come to see what matters in life.