Maria was sound enough now. She seemed so anyway. But he was no psychiatrist. Pilar was the psychiatrist. It probably had been good for them to have been together last night. Yes, unless it stopped. It certainly had been good for him. He felt fine today; sound and good and unworried and happy. The show looked bad enough but he was awfully lucky, too. He had been in others that announced themselves badly. Announced themselves; that was thinking in Spanish. Maria was lovely.

Look at her, he said to himself. Look at her.

He looked at her striding happily in the sun; her khaki shirt open at the neck. She walks like a colt moves, he thought. You do not run onto something like that. Such things don't happen. Maybe it never did happen, he thought. Maybe you dreamed it or made it up and it never did happen. Maybe it is like the dreams you have when some one you have seen in the cinema comes to your bed at night and is so kind and lovely. He'd slept with them all that way When he was asleep in bed. He could remember Garbo still, and Harlow. Yes, Harlow many times. Maybe it was like those dreams.

But he could still remember the time Garbo came to his bed the flight before the attack at Pozoblanco and she was wearing a soft silky wool sweater when he put his arm around her and when she leaned forward her hair swept forward and over his face and she said why had he never told her that he loved her when she had loved him all this time? She was not shy, nor cold, nor distant. She was just lovely to hold and kind and lovely and like the old days with Jack Gilbert and it was as true as though it happened and he loved her much more than Harlow though Garbo was only there once while Harlow-maybe this was like those dreams.

Maybe it isn't too, he said to himself. Maybe I could reach over and touch that Maria now, he said to himself. Maybe you are afraid to he said to himself. Maybe you would find out that it never happened and it was not true and it was something you made up like those dreams about the people of the cinema or how all your old girls come back and sleep in that robe at night on all the bare floors, in the straw of the haybarns, the stables, the corrales and the cortijos, the woods, the garages, the trucks and all the hills of Spain. They all came to that robe when he was asleep and they were all much nicer than they ever had been in life. Maybe it was like that. Maybe you would be afraid to touch her to see if it was true. Maybe you would, and probably it is something that you made up or that you dreamed.

He took a step across the trail and put his hand on the girl's arm. Under his fingers he felt the smoothness of her arm in the worn khaki. She looked at him and smiled.

"Hello, Maria," he said.

"Hello, Ingles," she answered and he saw her tawny brown face and the yellow-gray eyes and the full lips smiling and the cropped sun-burned hair and she lifted her face at him and smiled in his eyes. It was true all right.

Now they were in sight of El Sordo's camp in the last of the pines, where there was a rounded gulch-head shaped like an upturned basin. All these limestone upper basins must be full of caves, he thought. There are two caves there ahead. The scrub pines growing in the rock hide them well. This is as good or a better place than Pablo's.

"How was this shooting of thy family?" Pilar was saying to Joaquin.

"Nothing, woman," Joaquin said. "They were of the left as many others in Valladolid. When the fascists purified the town they shot first the father. He had voted Socialist. Then they shot the mother. She had voted the same. It was the first time she had ever voted. After that they shot the husband of one of the sisters. He was a member of the syndicate of tramway drivers. Clearly he could not drive a tram without belonging to the syndicate. But he was without politics. I knew him well. He was even a little hit shameless. I do not think he was even a good comrade. Then the husband of the other girl, the other sister, who was also in the trams, had gone to the hills as I had. They thought she knew where he was. But she did not. So they shot her because she would not tell them where he was."

"What barbarians," said Pilar. "Where is El Sordo? I do not see him."

"He is here. He is probably inside," answered Joaquin and stopping now, and resting the rifle butt on the ground, said, "Pilar, listen to me. And thou, Maria. Forgive me if I have molested you speaking of things of the family. I know that all have the same troubles and it is more valuable not to speak of them."

"That you should speak," Pilar said. "For what are we born if not to aid one another? And to listen and say nothing is a cold enough aid."

"But it can molest the Maria. She has too many things of her own."

"Que va," Maria said. "Mine are such a big bucket that yours falling in will never fill it. I am sorry, Joaquin, and I hope thy sister is well."

"So far she's all right," Joaquin said. "They have her in prison and it seems they do not mistreat her much."

"Are there others in the family?" Robert Jordan asked.

"No," the boy said. "Me. Nothing more. Except the brother-inlaw who went to the hills and I think he is dead."

"Maybe he is all right," Maria said. "Maybe he is with a band in other mountains."

"For me he is dead," Joaquin said. "He was never too good at getting about and he was conductor of a tram and that is not the best preparation for the hills. I doubt if he could last a year. He was Somewhat weak in the chest too."

"But he may be all right," Maria put her arm on his shoulder.

"Certainly, girl. Why not?" said Joaquin.

As the boy stood there, Maria reached up, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Joaquin turned his head away because he was crying.

"That is as a brother," Maria said to him. "I kiss thee as a brother."

The boy shook his head, crying without making any noise.

"I am thy sister," Maria said. "And I love thee and thou hast a family. We are all thy family."

"Including the Ingles," boomed Pilar. "Isn't it true, Ingles?"

"Yes," Robert Jordan said to the boy, "we are all thy family, Joaquin."

"He's your brother," Pilar said. "Hey Ingles?"

Robert Jordan put his arm around the boy's shoulder. "We are all brothers," he said. The boy shook his head.

"I am ashamed to have spoken," he said. "To speak of such things makes it more difficult for all. I am ashamed of molesting you."

"I obscenity in the milk of my shame," Pilar said in her deep lovely voice. "And if the Maria kisses thee again I will commence kissing thee myself. It's years since I've kissed a bullfighter, even an unsuccessful one like thee, I would like to kiss an unsuccessful bullfighter turned Communist. Hold him, Ingles, till I get a good kiss at him."

"Deja," the boy said and turned away sharply. "Leave me alone. I am all right and I am ashamed."

He stood there, getting his face under control. Maria put her hand in Robert Jordan's. Pilar stood with her hands on her hips looking at the boy mockingly now.

"When I kiss thee," she said to him, "it will not be as any sister. This trick of kissing as a sister."

"It is not necessary to joke," the boy said. "I told you I am all right, I am sorry that I spoke."

"Well then let us go and see the old man," Pilar said. "I tire myself with such emotion."

The boy looked at her. From his eyes you could see he was suddenly very hurt.

"Not thy emotion," Pilar said to him. "Mine. What a tender thing thou art for a bullfighter."

"I was a failure," Joaquin said. "You don't have to keep insisting on it."

"But you are growing the pigtail another time."

"Yes, and why not? Fighting stock serves best for that purpose economically. It gives employment to many and the State will control it. And perhaps now I would not be afraid."