“I love thee, Maria,” he said. “And no one has done anything to thee. Thee, they cannot touch. No one has touched thee, little rabbit.”
“You believe that?”
“I know it.”
“And you can love me?” warm again against him now.
“I can love thee more.”
“I will try to kiss thee very well.”
“Kiss me a little.”
“I do not know how.”
“Just kiss me.”
She kissed him on the cheek.
“No.”
“Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.”
“Look, turn thy head,” and then their mouths were tight together and she lay close pressed against him and her mouth opened a little gradually and then, suddenly, holding her against him, he was happier than he had ever been, lightly, lovingly, exultingly, innerly happy and unthinking and untired and unworried and only feeling a great delight and he said, “My little rabbit. My darling. My sweet. My long lovely.”
“What do you say?” she said as though from a great distance away.
“My lovely one,” he said.
They lay there and he felt her heart beating against his and with the side of his foot he stroked very lightly against the side of hers.
“Thee came barefooted,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then thee knew thou wert coming to the bed.”
“Yes.”
“And you had no fear.”
“Yes. Much. But more fear of how it would be to take my shoes off.”
“And what time is it now? lo sabes?”
“No. Thou hast no watch?”
“Yes. But it is behind thy back.”
“Take it from there.”
“No.”
“Then look over my shoulder.”
It was one o’clock. The dial showed bright in the darkness that the robe made.
“Thy chin scratches my shoulder.”
“Pardon it. I have no tools to shave.”
“I like it. Is thy beard blond?”
“Yes.”
“And will it be long?”
“Not before the bridge. Maria, listen. Dost thou–?”
“Do I what?”
“Dost thou wish?”
“Yes. Everything. Please. And if we do everything together, the other maybe never will have been.”
“Did you think of that?”
“No. I think it in myself but Pilar told me.”
“She is very wise.”
“And another thing,” Maria said softly. “She said for me to tell you that I am not sick. She knows about such things and she said to tell you that.”
“She told you to tell me?”
“Yes. I spoke to her and told her that I love you. I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before and I told Pilar and she said if I ever told you anything about anything, to tell you that I was not sick. The other thing she told me long ago. Soon after the train.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that nothing is done to oneself that one does not accept and that if I loved some one it would take it all away. I wished to die, you see.”
“What she said is true.”
“And now I am happy that I did not die. I am so happy that I did not die. And you can love me?”
“Yes. I love you now.”
“And I can be thy woman?”
“I cannot have a woman doing what I ao. But thou art my woman now.”
“If once I am, then I will keep on. Am I thy woman now?”
“Yes, Maria. Yes, my little rabbit.”
She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth and young and lovely with the warm, scalding coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, “And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone.”
“You want?”
“Yes,” she said almost fiercely. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
8
It was cold in the night and Robert Jordan slept heavily. Once he woke and, stretching, realized that the girl was there, curled far down in the robe, breathing lightly and regularly, and in the dark, bringing his head in from the cold, the sky hard and sharp with stars, the air cold in his nostrils, he put his head under the warmth of the robe and kissed her smooth shoulder. She did not wake and he rolled onto his side away from her and with his head out of the robe in the cold again, lay awake a moment feeling the long, seeping luxury of his fatigue and then the smooth tactile happiness of their two bodies touching and then, as he pushed his legs out deep as they would go in the robe, he slipped down steeply into sleep.