Meaning of quiet?

Answer:

He didn't speak to her about what happened, though she could take it much better than he, she could have withstood the explosion and the boiling steam and seeing the two men without breaking down so silently and catastrophically. He wanted to spare her the sight and the sounds, but his silence was like an echo of a horrible noise. He was locked up with it, blind and deaf from its pressure, even if she called for him he wouldn't hear. He tortured himself trying to understand, with questions and long stares pressed against the window pane, though he had only to make a single movement and say a single word. Then she could have lifted it from him as easily as a woman wraps a gauzy bandage around a bleeding scratch on a child, wrapping round, round, swiftly and lightly, holding his gaze, letting him talk while she wraps, how was it, how did it happen, tell me about it. So swiftly and lightly. But in front of this, this great white soundlessness, she could do nothing, even if she felt a hundred times older and stronger than him, she had to smile in despair with him. He lay next to her and knew her not. He knew nothing of a woman, he was a boy yet somehow, and he kept her far away in taboos and adolescent dreams. Suddenly she could see how he was as a boy, how he didn't come home from that first bleeding gash, he sat on his heels under a tree to watch his own blood. It was terrible and new and he wanted to understand what it was.