"Maybe you could."
She looked at him cryptically. "Not Alice Hemingway. I've got me a man
out there who is combing space for all three of us. You'll have to make
your own life and find your own girl."
"Suppose he doesn't find us?" he asked bluntly.
"Then," said Alice soberly, "we have no future to concern us, no
decision to make, and no failure to measure up to or to account for to
anybody."
"And we'll have died without having really lived?"
"Most everybody does. Few are content to lie down and get it over
with. One lifetime is not long enough to content one's self. No alert,
willing, intelligent human being can be content with _Thanatopsis_."
"I don't know it."
"I don't know it too well, either. Something about, 'When thy summons
comes to join the innumerable caravan that moves, et cetera, like
one who wraps the draperies of his couch about him and lies down to
pleasant dreams.' Or something like that."