Langdon saw it and came over to sit beside her on one arm of the chair. Her hand closed tightly around his and she looked away from the weaving shape in the corner.
"You were always good to me, Joe," she murmured.
"How could I be anything else?" he asked tonelessly. There was a new voice in the storm now, a great belling organ was crying to him to come out, Tanith was dancing in a sleet of fire just beyond the door.
"I'll miss you," she said. "I'll miss you very much."
"Why should you? I'll be along."
"Will you. Joe? I wonder. I can't ask it of you. I can't ask you to trade a thousand years of life, or ten thousand or a million, for the little sixty or seventy you'll have left out there. I can't ask you to leave your world for mine. You'll never be at home on Terra."
He smiled, without much mirth. "It's a trite phrase," he said, "but you know I'd die for you."
"I don't doubt that. Joe. But would you—live for me?"
He kissed her to avoid answering. I don't know. I honestly don't know.
It isn't so much a question of losing immortality, though God knows that means a lot. It means more than any mortal will ever know. It's that I'd be losing—Tanith.