He thinks on this question for a long, long moment. It's in him to say, You deserve better than some crownéd prick who vents his spleen at you without relief--to say, Come away with me to a place where there are others who will cherish your long silences, and herbs enough to remedy every heartache.

But she loves that crownéd prick. She loves him, and if she breaks, it won't from his cruelty; it will be because all her great unswerving force of love cannot so much as chip the great wall of his unhappiness.

She doesn't need Laertes to argue with her, or distract her, or find yet another way that she's been wrong. She had the same father that he had; she can do that herself well enough.

What she needs is to know that she's not alone.

"I would tell her ... I would tell her, 'Thou art my sister, and I'm with thee,'" he says at last.