A writers life: What's your beta reader saying to you?

This time, instead of sharing my usual tech-tidbits, I am after your assistance!
A beta reader has expressed, and I quote:
"just tell me how it is"
I know you can't please all of them all of the time and I might not be his cup of tea, but it was a little disconcerting to say the least! Personally, I thought that I was telling it how it is!!

So, here is an unedited extract from chapter 6 of novel 2. It is brief and thus does not require much effort on your part, but I would appreciate some feedback from fellow authors and readers. Please leave me a comment or a G+ Thanks in advance. Here 'tis.

"He found her seated by a small porthole window, looking out into deep space. The abruptness of their earlier public conversation had given him pause to find her before now. He watched her silently from the shadows as she contemplated the troubles they now shared in the universe at large. The way the light caught the side of her face was entrancing. Jamie couldn’t help but feel drawn in by her, she was a great beauty; but the play of light and shadow on her features drove at his heart with tender and bittersweet reflection. 
She was haunting in the dim light of the cosmos, her hollow eyes searching for some universal truth that would free her from the torment of uncertainty. He knew that look; he had lived that look for so many years it had changed him. He no longer felt the need to have the certainty of all the answers, instead becoming comfortable with the idea of the unknown and relishing the strange opportunities it presented. But the anguish that was etched on Clarissa’s face had never been part of his plan and it pained him in a place that only she could, to see her in the grip of reclusive anxiety. He loved her plain and simple, but there was his pride and hers to get through before they could make any sense of where they found themselves now.  
After a decade of imposed separation, watching her so still and quiet in the belly of the ship forced him to appreciate just how fragile she really was. Clarissa had always talked and walked tough, but she was a thinker, always had been, and that made her vulnerable to the darker side of unexpected; the worst possible outcome. Although she had obviously been prepared for this day given their daughter together, the reality of it was clearly proving to be a taunting foe. It was a look he had hoped she would never share with him and it stripped away his usual guard, leaving him emotionally naked and exposed to her all over again. She was the only woman he had ever truly loved and she was able to relight the embers without so much as a word or glance his way."


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