Perhaps some kind hand garners them--those tender, wonderful, courageous dreams of our wise youth and keeps them safely for us against the Day of Reckoning, so that they may weight the scales a little in our favour.
Peter stood looking down at the scattered fragments of the bridge with an odd kind of gravity in his eyes.

It seemed a piece of trenchant symbolism that the Lovers' Bridge should break when he and Nan essayed to cross it.

There was a slight, whimsical smile, which held something of pain, on his lips when he turned to her again.
"I shall have to carry you across," he said.
She shook her head.
"No, thanks.

You might drop me.

I can wade over." "It's too deep for you to do that.