If we stay, we go down together, and we go down fighting.” I put out my hand. “There is no one I would rather have at my back. To the end, then.” He grasped my hand and shook it. “To the end.”
Empires rose and fell and wars were fought and children were born and lived and grew old and died before he answered, and the worst of it was that I could not show him by word or gesture how very much his reply would mean to me.
