Then he felt her hand on his shoulder and turned quickly, his right hand holding the pistol under the robe.
“Oh, it is thee,” he said and dropping the pistol he reached both arms up and pulled her down. With his arms around her he could feel her shivering.
“Get in,” he said softly. “It is cold out there.”
“No. I must not.”
“Get in,” he said. “And we can talk about it later.”
She was trembling and he held her wrist now with one hand and held her lightly with the other arm. She had turned her head away.
“Get in, little rabbit,” he said and kissed her on the back of the neck.
“I am afraid.”
“No. Do not be afraid. Get in.”
“How?”
“Just slip in. There is much room. Do you want me to help you?”
“No,” she said and then she was in the robe and he was holding her tight to him and trying to kiss her lips and she was pressing her face against the pillow of clothing but holding her arms close around his neck. Then he felt her arms relax and she was shivering again as he held her.
“No,” he said and laughed. “Do not be afraid. That is the pistol.”
He lifted it and slipped it behind him.
“I am ashamed,” she said, her face away from him.
“No. You must not be. Here. Now.”
“No, I must not. I am ashamed and frightened.”
“No. My rabbit. Please.”
“I must not. If thou dost not love me.”
“I love thee.”
“I love thee. Oh, I love thee. Put thy hand on my head,” she said away from him, her face still in the pillow. He put his hand on her head and stroked it and then suddenly her face was away from the pillow and she was in his arms, pressed close against him, and her face was against his and she was crying.
He held her still and close, feeling the long length of the young body, and he stroked her head and kissed the wet saltiness of her eyes, and as she cried he could feel the rounded, firm-pointed breasts touching through the shirt she wore.
“I cannot kiss,” she said. “I do not know how.”
“There is no need to kiss.”
“Yes. I must kiss. I must do everything.”
“There is no need to do anything. We are all right. But thou hast many clothes.”
“What should I do?”
“I will help you.”
“Is that better?”
“Yes. Much. It is not better to thee?”
“Yes. Much better. And I can go with thee as Pilar said?”
“Yes.”
“But not to a home. With thee.”
“No, to a home.”
“No. No. No. With thee and I will be thy woman.”
Now as they lay all that before had been shielded was unshielded. Where there had been roughness of fabric all was smooth with a smoothness and firm rounded pressing and a long warm coolness, cool outside and warm within, long and light and closely holding, closely held, lonely, hollow-making with contours, happymaking, young and loving and now all warmly smooth with a hollowing, chest-aching, tight-held loneliness that was such that Robert Jordan felt he could not stand it and he said, “Hast thou loved others?”
“Never.”
Then suddenly, going dead in his arms, “But things were done to me.”
“By whom?”
“By various.”
Now she lay perfectly quietly and as though her body were dead and turned her head away from him.
“Now you will not love me.”
“I love you,” he said.
But something had happened to him and she knew it.
“No,” she said and her voice had gone dead and flat. “Thou wilt not love me. But perhaps thou wilt take me to the home. And I will go to the home and I will never be thy woman nor anything.”
“I love thee, Maria.”
“No. It is not true,” she said. Then as a last thing pitifully and hopefully.
“But I have never kissed any man.”
“Then kiss me now.”
“I wanted to,” she said. “But I know not how. Where things were done to me I fought until I could not see. I fought until– until–until one sat upon my head–and I bit him–and then they tied my mouth and held my arms behind my head–and others did things to me.”