" Oh dear,” said Jane. “How sad it is!” She limped to the sofa and sat down. She found that her eyes were full of tears. It was so sad: the intimate friendly room, and the table set ready for two people who would never come. Jane had never felt the sadness of the catastrophe before. She had felt the horror of it, and the eeriness of the empty world, but she had been too concerned with her own terrible problems to visualise the little intimate tragedies of the victims of the catastrophe. "

― D.E. Stevenson , The Empty World