How we cite our quotes: The book doesn't have numbered or titled chapters, but it is broken up into sections with sub-sections under these. We'll call this Chapter:Section:Paragraph.
Quote #1
December yielded nothing to spring. She awoke to each frozen, lonely day with dulled feeling. Then one Sunday afternoon winter leaned backward for an hour and she want walking. Suddenly she forgave everyone everything. A warmish breath of air was enough to inspire; she was again grateful for living. (4.5.3)
The warmth of the sun can make all the difference in the middle of days of dreary cold. Here, it inspires Helen to start feeling a bit happier to be alive, and bit more forgiving, too.
Quote #2
The matter was how he now felt, and he now felt bad that he had done it. And when Helen was around he felt worse. (4.5.4)
Frank longs for Helen to forgive him, but has he really forgiven himself? Would forgiving himself make him feel less bad?
Quote #3
It wouldn't necessarily mean that Helen Bober would then and there fall for him—the opposite could happen—but if she did, he wouldn't feel bad about it. (4.5.8)
Frank is a complicated soul. He really does want Helen to forgive him for wrongs he's done her family—participating in the attack upon her father—but at the same time he's interested in her loving him and sleeping with him.
Quote #4
Telling her would take guts and guts was something. (4.5.13)
He sure knows how to impress the ladies!
Quote #5
Waking, she fought an old distrust of the broken-faced stranger, without success. The stranger had changed, grown unstrange. That was the clue to what was happening to her. One day he seemed unknown, lurking at the far end of an unlit cellar; the next he was standing in the sunlight, a smile on his face, as if all she knew of him and all she didn't, had fused into a healed and easily remembered whole.
[…]
She felt she had changed him and this affected her. (6.1.1)
Here we get a hint that Helen's affections and compassion for Frank Alpine are not entirely selfless.
Quote #6
People forgave people—who else? He could explain if she would listen. Explaining was a way of getting close to someone you had hurt; as if in hurting them you were giving them a reason to love you. (7.2.4)
That sounds twisted, especially given the specific hurt Frank has caused Helen—rape. Does Frank remain a sympathetic character after he assaults Helen?
Quote #7
If he could root out what he had done, smash and destroy it; but it was done, beyond him to undo. (7.2.6)
If Helen forgives Frank, it won't mean forgetting the fact that he raped her. Their relationship will never be the same. Frank senses this.
Quote #8
She let him stay. If you were so poor where was your choice? (7.5.37)
Ida lets Frank stay at the store because they need his help. Would she have made the same decision if she knew about his attack on her daughter? We're betting "no." Why doesn't Helen speak up?