“Perhaps she involuntarily held out her hands in a gesture of compassion as she spoke. At any rate, I had caught them in my own and was clinging to them with an impulse as instinctive as that which prompts the drowning man to seize upon and cling to the rope which is thrown to him as he sinks for the last time. As I looked up into her compassionate face and her eyes moist with pity, my brain ceased to whirl. The tender human sympathy which thrilled in the soft pressure of her fingers, had brought me the support I needed. Its effect to calm and soothe was like that of some wonder-working elixer.”

- Edward Bellany, Looking Backward