"Every single one," said Pantalaimon, whispering like Lyra.
"The true stories, yes," she said, "the true stories the harpies want to hear in exchange. Yes. So if people live their whole lives and theyve got nothing to tell about it when theyve finished, then theyll never leave the world of the dead. Weve got to tell them that, Will."
She embraced each of them in her light, cool arms and kissed their foreheads. Then she bent to kiss the daemons, and they became birds and flew up with her as she spread her wings and rose swiftly into the air. Only a few seconds later she had vanished.
"Why...” Lyra began, and found her voice weak and trembling, "why cant I read the alethiometer anymore? Why cant I even do that? That was the one thing I could do really well, and its just not there anymore, it just vanished as if it had never come..."
"All right," he said, getting to his feet, holding his daemon close to his breast. "Then well have to, one of us will have to, Ill come to your world and..."
"Yes. But theres more leaking out all the time," Pantalaimon went on. "And it mustnt. It mustnt all leak away. Its got to stay in the world and not vanish, because otherwise everything good will fade away and die."
Lyra was bewildered. When had Pan ever needed forgiving? She looked at Will, and saw his puzzlement as clear as her own.
"Oh, no," said Lyra. "No, it cant be true ...”
"Everyone except us! And you and I could live here forever and just love each other."
"Yes, but I soon stopped."
"Not real traveling, then," said Lyra. "Just pretend..." "No," said Xaphania, "nothing like pretend. Pretending is easy. This way is hard, but much truer."
"A lifetime."
Will trembled with excitement, and his mind leapt to a single point: to a new window in the air between his world and Lyras. And it would be their secret, and they could go through whenever they chose, and live for a while in each others worlds, not living fully in either, so their daemons would keep theirhealth; and they could grow up together and maybe, much later on, they might have children, who would be secret citizens of two worlds; and they could bring all the learning of one world into the other, they could do all kinds of good...
"Wrong place," she said briefly, and tried again.
She turned away and clung to Will and said desperately:
"No, I liked you first."
"The Specters?" said Will. "We saw them during the battle, for the first time. What about them?"
"Oh, Will," she said, "what can we do? Whatever can we do? I want to live with you forever. I want to kiss you and lie down with you and wake up with you every day of my life till I die, years and years and years away. I dont want a memory, just a memory... "
"You read it by grace," said Xaphania, looking at her, "and you can regain it by work."
In the evening they shared the meal with Mary and Atal, saying little, and because the air was hot they thought theyd walk down to the sea, where there might be a cool breeze. They wandered along the river until they came to the wide beach, bright under the moon, where the low tide was turning.
"That is the ship bringing your friends to take you home. They will be here tomorrow."
"Listen," he said again, "Lyra, lets try and remember it exactly. There might be a way through. There might be a loophole."
"You didnt! You fought me!"
"It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for. But you have a friend who has already taken the first steps, and who could help you."
"I want you to show me how to close the openings that the knife makes."
"Well, Ill show you what to do," he said.
"No," he said.
"Well," she said, "yes. But you attacked me."
"Its the angel we saw," said Pantalaimon, guessing.
They spent all day on the wide hills, and in the heat of the afternoon, they visited their gold-and-silver grove. They talked, they bathed, they ate, they kissed, they lay in a trance of happiness murmuring words whose sound was as confused as their sense, and they felt they were melting with love.
"Yes, I do," said the angel.
The understanding was beginning to dawn on Will and Lyra. They fought it, they pushed it away, but it was just like the gray light that seeps into the sky and extinguishes the stars: it crept past every barrier they could put up and under every blind and around the edges of every curtain they could draw against it.
Lyra said, "Pan... ?"
"But your reading will be even better then, after a lifetime of thought and effort, because it will come from conscious understanding. Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once youve gained it, it will never leave you."
"And is it like the alethiometer?" said Will. "Does it take a whole lifetime to learn?"
"And we must make enough Dust for them, Will, and keep the window open...”
Then both the daemons bristled and looked up. Will and Lyra sensed it, too, and followed their eyes to the sky. A light was moving toward them: a light with wings.
"I couldnt understand what he was. But when I saw you, I liked you straightaway because you were brave."
He guessed correctly. As the boy and the girl and the two daemons watched her approach, Xaphania spread her wings wider and glided down to the sand. Will, for all the time hed spent in the company of Balthamos, wasnt prepared for the strangeness of this encounter. He and Lyra held each others hands
"Oh," she cried, tossing her head this way and that, "he said, you know what he said, you were there, Will, you listened, too!"
"Tell us," he said. "Dont be afraid."
"Yes, we do. Are there many windows to close?" "Thousands. There is the terrible abyss made by the bomb, and there is the great opening Lord Asriel made out of his own world. They must both be closed, and they will. But there are many smaller openings, too, some deep under the earth, some high in the air, which came about in other ways."
"Every single one, they must all be closed?" said Will.
Will had no idea who that could be, and at that moment he wasnt in the mood to ask.
"They can spend a little time, but not a long time," Will said. "My father had been away from his world, my world, for ten years. And he was nearly dying when I found him. Ten years, thats all."
A few moments after she had gone, Lyra gave a little gasp.
They lay down in the soft sand at the foot of the dunes, and then they heard the first bird calling.
He was formed like a dove, but his color was dark and hard to tell in the moonlight; at any rate, he showed up clearly on the white sand. The other bird still circled overhead, still singing, and then she flew down to join him: another dove, but pearl white, and with a crest of dark red feathers.
But Lyra was shaking her head.
"The openings that werent made by the subtle knife," Will said, "is it really necessary to close them all? Because surely Dust only escapes through the openings the knife made. The other ones must have been there for thousands of years, and still Dust exists."
And then, with a flutter of wings that threw up a little fountain of sand in front of him, the first bird landed a few yards away.
Lyra was shaking with anger and grief, striding up and down with clenched fists and turning her tear-streaming face this way and that as if looking for an answer. Will jumped up and seized her shoulders, and felt her tense and trembling.
Between them, the daemons managed to tell them everything Serafina had told them, beginning with the revelation about the childrens own natures: about how, without intending it, they had become like witches in their power to separate and yet still be one being.
"It was a female angel," said Kirjava.
She crossed her legs, pulling the skirt over them to make a lap. Will lay on one elbow and watched. The bright moonlight, reflected off the white sand, lit up her face with a radiance that seemed to draw out some other radiance from inside her; her eyes glittered, and her expression was so serious and absorbed that Will could have fallen in love with her again if love didnt already possess every fiber of his being.
"And youre going to close them all except one," Will said. "All except the one from the world of the dead."
"We must leave it open for them! We must!"
Lyra gasped. But her surprise was mixed with a pleasure so like the joy that flooded through her when she had put the fruit to his lips that she couldnt protest, because she was breathless. With a racing heart she responded in the same way: she put her hand on the silky warmth of Wills daemon, and as her fingers tightened in the fur, she knew that Will was feeling exactly what she was.
"Theres a light out at sea," said Lyra.
"Understand this," said Xaphania: "Dust is not a constant. Theres not a fixed quantity that has always been the same. Conscious beings make Dust, they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on.
"Its about Dust," said the cat daemon, and Will marveled to hear part of his own nature telling him something he didnt know. "It was all flowing away, all the Dust there was, down into the abyss that you saw. Somethings stopped it flowing down there, but...”
Will swallowed. "Ill show you," he said, "and in return, can you help us?"
"But wheres the rest leaving from?" said Lyra.
"No," she cried, jumping up beside him, and Kirjava joined Pantalaimon on the sand as boy and girl clung together desperately. "Ill do it, Will! Well come to your world and live there! It doesnt matter if we get ill, me and Pan, were strong, I bet we last a good long time, and there are probably good doctors in your world, Dr. Malone would know! Oh, lets do that!"
Will was thinking through another possibility. "Suppose they closed all the other windows," he said, "and we just made one when we needed to, and went through as quickly as we could and closed it up immediately, that would be safe, surely? If we didnt leave much time for Dust to go out?"
"Its funny," she said, "you remember when we were younger and I didnt want you to stop changing at all...Well, I wouldnt mind so much now. Not if you stay like this."
"An angel told us," said Kirjava. "We met an angel. She told us all about that, and other things as well. Its true, Lyra."
"We shall take care of the Specters," said Xaphania. Will took the knife and faced the sea. To his surprise, his hands were quite steady. He cut a window into his own world, and they found themselves looking at a great factory or chemical plant, where complicated pipe work ran between buildings and storage tanks, where lights glowed at every corner, where wisps of steam rose into the air.
Lyra made to move toward them, but Pantalaimon spoke.
"Can you see?" he said, for although the moon was bright, the symbols around the face were very small.
So he taught the angel how to feel for the edges of the window, just as Giacomo Paradisi had shown him, sensing them at his fingers ends and pinching them together. Little by little the window closed, and the factory disappeared.
They lay side by side, hand in hand, looking at the sky.
"Yes."
"And so we must leave our world to stay in Lyras," said Kirjava, "or Pan and Lyra must leave theirs and come to stay in ours. Theres no other choice."
"Ive never heard of one of them. Maybe she was lying."
And Will knew what it was to see his daemon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would still feel some sensations as bright and fresh as ever: Lyras fingers putting the fruit between his lips under the gold-and-silver trees; her warm mouth pressing against his; his daemon being torn from his unsuspecting breast as they entered the world of the dead; and the sweet rightfulness of her coming back to him at the edge of the moonlit dunes.
"Will," she said, "I have come to ask your help."
"Well, we found out where they come from," said Kirjava. "And this is the worst thing: theyre like the children of the abyss. Every time we open a window with the knife, it makes a Specter. Its like a little bit of the abyss that floats out and enters the world. Thats why the Cittagazze world was so full of them, because of all the windows they left open there."
"Im going to ask the alethiometer," Lyra said. "Thatll know! I dont know why I didnt think of it before."
And at the word alone, Will felt a great wave of rage and despair moving outward from a place deep within him, as if his mind were an ocean that some profound convulsion had disturbed. All his life hed been alone, and now he must be alone again, and this infinitely precious blessing that had come to him must be taken away almost at once. He felt the wave build higher and steeper to darken the sky, he felt the crest tremble and begin to spill, he felt the great mass crashing down with the whole weight of the ocean behind it against the iron-bound coast of what had to be. And he found himself gasping and shaking and crying aloud with more anger and pain than he had ever felt in his life, and he found Lyra just as helpless in his arms. But as the wave expended its force and the waters withdrew, the bleak rocks remained; there was no arguing with fate; neither his despair nor Lyras had moved them a single inch.
How long his rage lasted, he had no idea. But eventually it had to subside, and the ocean was a little calmer after the convulsion. The waters were still agitated, and perhaps they would never be truly calm again, but the great force had gone.
"Lyra," he said, "Serafina Pekkala came to us last night. She told us all kinds of things. Shes gone back to guide the gyptians here. Farder Corams coming, and Lord Faa, and theyll be here...”
The angel said, "We shall close them all, because if you thought that any still remained, you would spend yourlife searching for one, and that would be a waste of the time you have. You have other work than that to do, much more important and valuable, in your own world. There will be no travel outside it anymore."
"No," he said, "memorys a poor thing to have. Its your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want. I didnt know I could ever love anything so much. Oh, Lyra, I wish this night would never end! If only we could stay here like this, and the world could stop turning, and everyone else could fall into a sleep..."
tightly as the angel came toward them, with the light of another world shining on her. She was unclothed, but that meant nothing. What clothes could an angel wear anyway? Lyra thought. It was impossible to tell if she was old or young, but her expression was austere and compassionate, and both Will and Lyra felt as if she knew them to their hearts.
Lyra took a deep breath and began to turn the wheels. But after only a few moments, she stopped and turned the instrument around.
"Yes, but remember, he could go back to his own world whenever he liked and get healthy again. Thats where you saw him first, after all, in your world. He must have found some secret window that no one else knew about."
She gulped and nodded and angrily brushed her wrist across her eyes, and took several deep breaths; but he could see she was too tense, and he put his hands on her shoulders and then felt her trembling and hugged her tight. She pulled back and tried again. Once more she gazed at the symbols, once more she turned the wheels, but those invisible ladders of meaning down which shed stepped with such ease and confidence werent there. She just didnt know what any of the symbols meant.
"I dont know," she said, shaking her head, "I dont know whats happening... I know it so well, but I cant seem to see what it means..."
"I know where they all are," she said, "I got it off by heart. Hush now... "
Will, watching, saw her beloved face clearly. And because he knew it so well, and hed studied her expression in happiness and despair and hope and sorrow, he could tell that something was wrong; for there was no sign of the clear concentration she used to sink into so quickly. Instead, an unhappy bewilderment spread gradually over her: she bit her lower lip, she blinked more and more, and her eyes moved slowly from symbol to symbol, almost at random, instead of darting swiftly and certainly.
"What is it?" said Will.
"I did not! You came charging out and attacked me."
Both daemons looked at Will, and at the knife.
"Will, it was that golden light!" Lyra said. "The light that all flowed into the abyss and vanished... And that was Dust? Was it really?"
"All the windows must be closed," said Pantalaimon. "All of them."
So, wondering whether any lovers before them had made this blissful discovery, they lay togetheras the earth turned slowly and the moon and stars blazed above them.
And Lyra cried aloud. Pantalaimons owl cry the night before had frightened every small creature that heard it, but it was nothing to the passionate wail that Lyra uttered now. The daemons were shocked, and Will, seeing their reaction, understood why: they didnt know the rest of the truth; they didnt know what Will and Lyra themselves had learned.
Then the full bleak daylight struck in.
The word tomorrow fell like a heavy blow. Lyra had never thought she would be reluctant to see Farder Coram, and John Faa, and Serafina Pekkala.
"Not in the way you want. I can see what youve been talking about. Your sorrow has left traces in the air. This is no comfort, but believe me, every single being who knows of your dilemma wishes things could be otherwise; but there are fates that even the most powerful have to submit to. There is nothing I can do to help you change the way things are."
She sat down, wiping her cheeks with the palm of one hand and reaching for the rucksack with the other. She carried it everywhere; when Will thought of her in later years, it was often with that little bag over her shoulder. She tucked the hair behind her ears in the swift movement he loved and took out the black velvet bundle.
"She?" said Lyra passionately, suspicious.
"But how do you know?" demanded Lyra.
"Oh, Will," she cried, "I cant do it! Its left me!"
Before she moved to him, she spoke. She said, "The witch gave me a name. I had no need of one before. She called me Kirjava. But listen, listen to us now..."
"Yes!"
"You mean a full lifetime, dont you?" Lyra whispered. "A whole long life? Not... not just... a few years..."
"Alone, though..."
"Its no good, I can tell, its gone forever, it just came when I needed it, for all the things I had to do, for rescuing Roger, and then for us two, and now that its over, now that everythings finished, its just left me... Its gone, Will! Ive lost it! Itll never come back!"
"I shall go now," said the angel. "I have learned what I needed to know."
Biting her lip, she watched him as he walked up and down in his distracted anguish.
"Oh, it would work! Im sure it would!" she said.
"The knife was a human invention."
"Listen," he said, "Lyra, listen: what did my father say?"
He was shaking his head, and she saw the brilliance of tears on his cheeks.
Lyras eyes were watching him, wide with anguish.
"I see," he said, sighing. "And will we see you again? Will we ever speak to an angel once we go back to our own worlds?"
"Hush," he said, "dont fret. Its still there inside you, all that knowledge. Just be calm and let yourself find it. Dont force it. Just sort of float down to touch it..."
"Every time we made an opening," said Kirjava, and again Will felt that little thrill: Shes me, and Im her, "every time anyone made an opening between the worlds, us or the old Guild men, anyone, the knife cut into the emptiness outside. The same emptiness there is down in the abyss. We never knew. No one knew, because the edge was too fine to see. But it was quite big enough for Dust to leak out of. If they closed it up again at once, there wasnt time for much to leak out, but there were thousands that they never closed up. So all this time, Dust has been leaking out of the worlds and into nothingness."
"He said...” Lyra began, gulping, "he said that people could spend a little time in other worlds without being affected. They could. And we have, havent we? Apart from what we had to do to go into the world of the dead, were still healthy, arent we?"
"So every time Ive used the knife," he said, "every single time, Ive made another Specter come to life?"
"But what about Lord Boreal? Sir Charles? He was healthy enough, wasnt he?"
Will felt a dull horror at his heart, and Kirjava pressed herself against his breast, feeling it, too, and trying to comfort him.
"And we could go from one to the other, and stay healthy...”
He remembered Iorek Byrnison, in the cave where hed forged the knife again, saying, "What you dont know is what the knife does on its own. Your intentions may be good. The knife has intentions, too."
"I will love you forever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, Ill drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again..."
They turned to the angel and saw she had understood, and that she felt as sorrowful as they did. But she could see farther than they could, and there was a calm hope in her expression, too.
"We could, except that..."
She sat down slowly, and he sat down beside her.
The daemons flew back down now, and changed again, and came toward them over the soft sand. Lyra sat up to greet them, and Will marveled at the way he could instantly tell which daemon was which, never mind what form they had. Pantalaimon was now an animal whose name he couldnt quite find: like a large and powerful ferret, red-gold in color, lithe and sinuous and full of grace. Kirjava was a cat again. But she was a cat of no ordinary size, and her fur was lustrous and rich, with a thousand different glints and shades of ink black, shadow gray, the blue of a deep lake under a noon sky, mist-lavender-moonlight-fog... To see the meaning of the word subtlety, you had only to look at her fur.
"I never asked her about my father and mother, and I cant ask the alethiometer, either, now... I wonder if Ill ever know?"
"Yes, you must listen," said Pantalaimon. "This is hard to explain."
They both turned their heads at once, because it was a bird that sounded like no creature that belonged to the world they were in. From somewhere above in the dark came a delicate trilling song, and then another answered it from a different direction. Delighted, Will and Lyra jumped up and tried to see the singers, but all they could make out was a pair of dark skimming shapes that flew low and then darted up again, all the time singing and singing in rich, liquid bell tones an endlessly varied song.
Next day Will and Lyra went out by themselves again, speaking little, eager to be alone with each other. They looked dazed, as if some happy accident had robbed them of their wits; they moved slowly; their eyes were not focused on what they looked at.
Will swallowed hard and said, "All right. Ill show you how to close a window. But Ill have to open one first, and make another Specter. I never knew about them, or else Id have been more careful."
"How long will that take?"
She knew what he was going to say, and she saw him holding the beautiful, healthy daemon he hadnt even begun to know; and she thought of his mother, and she knew that he was thinking of her, too. To abandon her and live with Lyra, even for the few years theyd have together, could he do that? He might be living with Lyra, but she knew he wouldnt be able to live with himself.
He felt her tremble, and then under his hands the delicate bones of her back began to rise and fall, and he heard her sob quietly. He stroked her warm hair, her tender shoulders, and then he kissed her face again and again, and presently she gave a deep, shuddering sigh and fell still.
Will put his hand on hers. A new mood had taken hold of him, and he felt resolute and peaceful. Knowing exactly what he was doing and exactly what it would mean, he moved his hand from Lyras wrist and stroked the red-gold fur of her daemon.
And Pantalaimon said, "Oh, Lyra, forgive us, but we have to tell you what we found out..."
She was trembling. She felt very young as he held her to his side.
"Ill be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, well cling together so tight that nothing and no onell ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you.. .Well live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and inthose little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont just be able to take one, theyll have to take two, one of you and one of me, well be joined so tight..."
"Do you remember," she whispered, "when you first came into that cafe in Cittagazze, and youd never seen a daemon?"
"Pan," Lyra said as he flowed up onto her lap, "youre not going to change a lot anymore, are you?"
"And I should break the knife," said Will.
"Every opening," Lyra said in a whisper.
"I dont know," said Xaphania. "But you should not spend your time waiting."
"Yes, but," he mocked softly.
"My help? How can I help you?"
He disengaged her arms gently and made her sit down. At once Pantalaimon, frightened, flowed up onto her lap, and the cat daemon tentatively came close to Will. They hadnt touched yet, but now he put out a hand to her, and she moved her cat face against his fingers and then stepped delicately onto his lap.
But the daemons were distressed, and Kirjava was murmuring, "No, no."
"And if you help everyone else in your worlds to do that, by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious... Then they will renew enough to replace what is lost through one window. So there could be one left open."
"That long..."
"No," she said in a quiet wail, "we cant, Will...”
“What work have I got to do, then?" said Will, hut went on at once, "No, on second thought, dont tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, Ill always he thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, Ill be resentful because itll feel as if I didnt have a choice, and if I dont do it, Ill feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else."
"Well, we could do that!"
She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned the instrument around. It looked strange and awkward in her hands. Pantalaimon, mouse-formed, crept into her lap and rested his black paws on the crystal, peering at one symbol after another. Lyra turned one wheel, turned another, turned the whole thing around, and then looked up at Will, stricken.
"And if we do," he said shakily, "if we live our lives properly and think about them as we do, then therell be something to tell the harpies about as well. Weve got to tell people that, Lyra."
"Yes, otherwise..."
"Then you have already taken the first steps toward wisdom," said Xaphania.
"And must all the windows be closed?" said Will. "Every single one ?"
"Yes, that is a promise. But it is conditional, and you know the condition."
And Pantalaimon said, "The Specters... She told us about the Specters, too."
"Yes," she said, "alone."
"Baruch and Balthamos told me that they used openings like that to travel between the worlds. Will angels no longer be able to do that? Will you be confined to one world as we are?" "No; we have other ways of traveling." "The way you have," Lyra said, "is it possible for us to learn?" "Yes. You could learn to do it, as Wills father did. It uses the faculty of what you call imagination. But that does not mean making things up. It is a form of seeing."
Then he changed, and flowed over the sand to her as a snow-white ermine. The other daemon changed, too, Will felt it happen, like a little grip at his heart, and became a cat.
While they had been speaking, the window had been open beside them. The lights were glowing in the factory, the work was going on; machines were turning, chemicals were combining, people were producing goods and earning their livings. That was the world where Will belonged.
He thought she would die of her grief there and then. She flung herself into his arms and sobbed, clinging passionately to his shoulders, pressing her nails into his hack and her face into his neck, and all he could hear was, "No, no, no..."
"A marten," he said, finding the name for Pantalaimon, "a pine marten."
He stopped and turned, and went on: "Dyou remember another thing he said, my father? He said we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are. He said that for us there isnt any elsewhere. Thats what he meant, I can see now. Oh, its too bitter. I thought he just meant Lord Asriel and his new world, but he meant us, he meant you and me. We have to live in our own worlds..."
"Pan," she said, distressed, "oh, Pan, youre not happy, what is it? What is it?"
"But thats not all," Kirjava said.
"And they grow by feeding on Dust," said Pantalaimon. "And on daemons. Because Dust and daemons are sort of similar; grown-up daemons anyway. And the Specters get bigger and stronger as they do..."
She sobbed with desperate abandon. All he could do was hold her. He didnt know how to comfort her, because it was plain that she was right.
And she knew, too, that neither daemon would change now, having felt a lovers hands on them. These were their shapes for life: they would want no other.
"Wed make it where no one could ever find it," he went on, "and only us two would know...”
And he suddenly knew her thought, and in the same anguished tone, he said, "No, the dead...”
"Oh, we cant, Will!" she said. "We cant do that to people, not let other Specters out, not now weve seen what they do!"
"Its strange to think that angels dont know the way to do this," Will said.
"Dyou think I could bear that, Lyra?" he said. "Dyou think I could live happily watching you get sick and ill and fade away and then die, while I was getting stronger and more grown-up day by day? Ten years... Thats nothing. Itd pass in a flash. Wed be in our twenties. Its not that far ahead. Think of that, Lyra, you and me grown up, just preparing to do all the things we want to do, and then... it all comes to an end. Do you think I could bear to live on after you died? Oh, Lyra, Id follow you down to the world of the dead without thinking twice about it, just like you followed Roger; and that would be two lives gone for nothing, my life wasted like yours. No, we should spend our whole lifetimes together, good, long, busy lives, and if we cant spend them together, we... well have to spend them apart."
