The people we love are usually stronger than we give them credit for. It is the nature of love, perhaps, to want to shoulder all the pain rather than see the loved one suffer. But sometimes pain is better than emptiness. I have been so empty Kit. All my life. So full of emptiness. That is strange paradox is nit not - full of emptiness?

I am free, you see," she said, "to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. that is why I love you and it is the way I love you. If you have come here, Kit, because you think you owe me something, because you believe I might crumble without your protection, then go away again with my blessing and find happiness with someone else." "I love you," he said again.

Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.

But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.

Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?