"Perhaps, some day, the other kind of luck will come, too." "That's out of the question"-- harshly.
"Do you know a little poem called 'Empty Hands' ?" she asked.

"I set it to music one day because I liked the words so much.

Listen." In a low voice, a trifle shaken by reason of the sudden tensity which had crept into the atmosphere, she repeated the brief lyric: "But sometimes God on His great white Throne Looks down from the Heaven above, And lays in the hands that are empty The tremulous Star of Love." As she spoke the last verse Nan's voice took on a tender, instinctive note of consolation.

Had she been looking she would have seen Peter Mallory's hand clench itself as though to crush down some sudden, urgent motion.

But she was gazing straight in front of her into the softly lit radiance of the car.
"Only sometimes there isn't any star, and your hands would be 'outstretched in vain,' as the song says," he commented.
"Oh, I hope not!" cried Nan.