After Dark, My Sweet

"When a man stops caring what happens, all the strain is lifted from him. Suspicion and worry and fear, all things that twist his thinking out of focus are brushed aside, and he can see people exactly as they are at last—as I saw Fay then: weak and frightened but basically as good as a person could be and hating herself for not being better. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was that she live, it was the only way my having lived would make any sense. It was why I had been made like I was - to do something for her that she could not do for herself, and then to protect her so that she could go on, so that she could have the reason for living that I’d never had."