Reason no. 5010 for why I love Robert Louis Stevenson:

I could have kissed her for that word, not with a lover's mind, but in a heat of admiration. For it always warms a man to see a woman brave.

[from Catriona, the sequel to Kidnapped, which recently fell into my hands at the Goodwill: 2 dollars exceedingly well spent on a sturdy little Thomas Nelson hardback, circa 1918]