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Reader question: Please explain “saving grace” in this passage: Her first thought was that he had left. And then she thought that maybe he has never been at all, that she had dreamed him, that he had no flesh or blood, existed only as a thought she had thought, a wish she had wished, a saving grace she had imagined to keep between herself and the thing she sensed in the shadowed distance. My comments: While we’re not at all clear what that “thing she sensed in the shadowed distance” is, we can be pretty sure what “a saving grace” means here – something great in strength and especially redeeming power. Whether “he” has been and has left or just had been a dream, “he” now serves one single function – something for her to back on for strength and comfort. “He” is a “saving grace”, something that makes her feel wholesome and complete, without whom her life – at least her mind – would not have been, well, all well. To exaggerate: “He” is the saving grace that prevents her life from becoming a total disgrace. Now, definitions. “Saving grace” comes from God. Not directly, for goodness sake, but from Christians who talk of God’s great redeeming power. Grace refers to “God’s grace”, in other words God’s great, inexhaustible, unconditional love, benevolence, protection and of course, redeeming power – to resurrect the dead and to pardon sins and to, for instance, let sinners make a triumphant comeback from disgrace to renewed respectability, authority, fame and power. You might say God’s saving grace is what Tiger Woods, among others, is currently seeking. | 
