"What rotten stuff is the snow and how beautiful it looks," Pilar said.
"What an illusion is the snow."
She turned to Maria.
"I am sorry I was rude to thee, _guapa_.
I don't know what has held me today.
I have an evil temper."
"I never mind what you say when you are angry," Maria told her.
"And you are angry often."
"Nay, it is worse than anger," Pilar said, looking across at the peaks.
"Thou art not well," Maria said.
"Neither is it that," the woman said.
"Come here, guapa, and put thy head in my lap."
Maria moved close to her, put her arms out and folded them as One does who goes to sleep without a pillow and lay with her head on her arms.
She turned her face up at Pilar and smiled at her but the big woman looked on across the meadow at the mountains.
She stroked the girl's head without looking down at her and ran a blunt finger across the girl's forehead and then around the line of her ear and down the line where the hair grew on her neck.
"You can have her in a little while, _Ingles_," she said.
Robert Jordan was sitting behind her.
"Do not talk like that," Maria said.
"Yes, he can have thee," Pilar said and looked at neither of them.
"I have never wanted thee.
But I am jealous."
"Pilar," Maria said.
"Do not talk thus."
"He can have thee," Pilar said and ran her finger around the lobe of the girl's ear.
"But I am very jealous."
"But Pilar," Maria said.
"It was thee explained to me there was nothing like that between us."
"There is always something like that," the woman said.
"There is always something like something that there should not be.
But with me there is not.
Truly there is not.
I want thy happiness and nothing more."
Maria said nothing but lay there, trying to make her head rest lightly.
"Listen, _guapa_," said Pilar and ran her finger now absently but tracingly over the contours of her cheeks.
"Listen, _guapa_, I love thee and he can have thee, I am no _tortillera_ but a woman made for men.
That is true.
But now it gives me pleasure to say thus, in the daytime, that I care for thee."
"I love thee, too."
"_Que va_.
Do not talk nonsense.
Thou dost not know even of what I speak."
"I know."
"_Que va_, that you know.
You are for the _Ingles_.
That is seen and as it should be.
That I would have.
Anything else I would not have.
I do not make perversions.
I only tell you something true.
Few people will ever talk to thee truly and no women.