"I will buy seven wedding shirts," she said. "One for each day of the week. And I will buy a clean wedding shirt for thee. Dost ever wash thy shirt?"

"Sometimes."

"I will keep everything clean and I will pour thy whiskey and put the water in it as it was done at Sordo's. I will obtain olives and salted codfish and hazel nuts for thee to eat while thou drinkest and we will stay in the room for a month and never leave it. If I am fit to receive thee," she said, suddenly unhappy.

"That is nothing," Robert Jordan told her. "Truly it is nothing. It is possible thou wert hurt there once and now there is a scar that makes a further hurting. Such a thing is possible. All such things pass. And also there are good doctors in Madrid if there is truly anything."

"But all was good before," she said pleadingly.

"That is the promise that all will be good again."

"Then let us talk again about Madrid." She curled her legs between his and rubbed the top of her head against his shoulder. "But will I not be so ugly there with this cropped head that thou wilt be ashamed of me?"

"Nay. Thou art lovely. Thou hast a lovely face and a beautiful body, long and light, and thy skin is smooth and the color of burnt gold and every one will try to take thee from me."

"Que va, take me from thee," she said. "No other man will ever touch me till I die. Take me from thee! Que va."

"But many will try. Thou wilt see."

"They will see I love thee so that they will know it would be as unsafe as putting their hands into a caldron of melted lead to touch me. But thou? When thou seest beautiful women of the same culture as thee? Thou wilt not be ashamed of me?"

"Never. And I will marry thee."

"If you wish," she said. "But since we no longer have the Church I do not think it carries importance."

"I would like us to be married."

"If you wish. But listen. If we were ever in another country where there still was the Church perhaps we could be married in it there."

"In my country they still have the Church," he told her. "There we can be married in it if it means aught to thee. I have never been married. There is no problem."

"I am glad thou hast never been married," she said. "But I am glad thou knowest about such things as you have told me for that means thou hast been with many women and the Pilar told me that it is only such men who are possible for husbands. But thou wilt not run with other women now? Because it would kill me."

"I have never run with many women," he said, truly. "Until thee I did not think that I could love one deeply."

She stroked his cheeks and then held her hands clasped behind his head. "Thou must have known very many."

"Not to love them."

"Listen. The Pilar told me something-"

"Say it."

"No. It is better not to. Let us talk again about Madrid."

"What was it you were going to say?"

"I do not wish to say it."

"Perhaps it would be better to say it if it could be important."

"You think it is important?"

"Yes."

"But how can you know when you do not know what it is?"

"From thy manner."

"I will not keep it from you then. The Pilar told me that we would all die tomorrow and that you know it as well as she does and that you give it no importance. She said this not in criticism but in admiration."

"She said that?" he said. The crazy bitch, he thought, and he said, "That is more of her gypsy manure. That is the way old market women and cafe cowards talk. That is manuring obscenity." He felt the sweat that came from under his armpits and slid down between his arm and his side and he said to himself, So you are scared, eh? and aloud he said, "She is a manure-mouthed superstitious bitch. Let us talk again of Madrid."

"Then you know no such thing?"

"Of course not. Do not talk such manure," he said, using a stronger, ugly word.

But this time when he talked about Madrid there was no slipping into make-believe again. Now he was just lying to his girl and to himself to pass the night before battle and he knew it. He liked to do it, but all the luxury of the acceptance was gone. But he started again.

"I have thought about thy hair," he said. "And what we can do about it. You see it grows now all over thy head the same length like the fur of an animal and it is lovely to feel and I love it very much and it is beautiful and it flattens and rises like a wheatfield in the wind when I pass my hand over it."

"Pass thy hand over it."

He did and left his hand there and went on talking to her throat, as he felt his own throat swell. "But in Madrid I thought we could go together to the coiffeur's and they could cut it neatly on the sides and in the back as they cut mine and that way it would look better in the town while it is growing out."

"I would look like thee," she said and held him close to her. "And then I never would want to change it."

"Nay. It will grow all the time and that will only be to keep it neat at the start while it is growing long. How long will it take it to grow long?"

"Really long?"

"No. I mean to thy shoulders. It is thus I would have thee wear it."

"As Garbo in the cinema?"

"Yes," he said thickly.

Now the making believe was coming back in a great rush and he would take it all to him. It had him now, and again he surrendered and went on. "So it will hang straight to thy shoulders and curl at the ends as a wave of the sea curls, and it will be the color of ripe wheat and thy face the color of burnt gold and thine eyes the only color they could be with thy hair and thy skin, gold with the dark flecks in them, and I will push thy head back and look in thy eyes and hold thee tight against me-"

"Where?"

"Anywhere. Wherever it is that we are. How long will it take for thy hair to grow?"

"I do not know because it never had been cut before. But I think in six months it should be long enough to hang well below my ears and in a year as long as thou couldst ever wish. But do you know what will happen first?"

"Tell me."

"We will be in the big clean bed in thy famous room in our famous hotel and we will sit in the famous bed together and look into the mirror of the armoire and there will be thee and there will be me in the glass and then I will turn to thee thus, and put my arms around thee thus, and then I will kiss thee thus."

Then they lay quiet and close together in the night, hot-aching, rigid, close together and holding her, Robert Jordan held closely too all those things that he knew could never happen, and he went on with it deliberately and said, "Rabbit, we will not always live in that hotel."

"Why not?"

"We can get an apartment in Madrid on that street that runs along the Parque of the Buen Retiro. I know an American woman who furnished apartments and rented them before the movement and I know how to get such an apartment for only the rent that was paid before the movement. There are apartments there that face on the park and you can see all of the park from the windows; the iron fence, the gardens, and the gravel walks and the green of the lawns where they touch the gravel, and the trees deep with shadows and the many fountains, and now the chestnut trees will be in bloom. In Madrid we can walk in the park and row on the lake if the water is back in it now."

"Why would the water be out?"

"They drained it in November because it made a mark to sight from when the planes came over for bombing. But I think that the water is back in it now. I am not sure. But even if there is no water in it we can walk through all the park away from the lake and there is a part that is like a forest with trees from all parts of the world with their names on them, with placards that tell what trees they are and where they came from."

"I would almost as soon go the cinema," Maria said. "But the trees sound very interesting and I will learn them all with thee if I can remember them."