The Last of the Mohicans - Uncas/Alice Protect Alice.
It’s such an unshakable principle for all of them – the Colonel, Cora, Major Heyward – that Uncas doesn’t think they’re even capable of questioning it. Protect Alice, keep her shielded, safe, innocent, hidden.
Uncas thinks they’re wrong. There is a stillness about Alice that the people in her life seem to see as fragility, when Uncas, by nature quiet himself, sees the strength in it: the girl who soldiers on in a crisis, works whole nights in the hospital, bears up Cora’s passionate rage.
It kindles in him a slow, deep longing to improve upon the principle.