That was the thing Wescott would keep returning to in the days that followed: not that Bea was kind, though she was, but that she was brave — that she had done the decent thing precisely in the situation most engineered to punish decency, had spent her own scarce safety to buy a stranger a moment of dignity, when every calculation of self-interest told her to look away.

The people paid to be gracious had looked away because it cost them nothing to be cruel.

The woman who had everything to lose had stepped forward because she could not stand to watch.

Courage, he thought, is not the absence of something to lose.

It is acting well when you have a great deal to lose and do it anyway.

Irritated, Danika hit a few more keys.