But tell me truly.
Did the earth never move for thee before?"
"Never," he said truly.
"Now am I happy," she said.
"Now am I truly happy.
"You are thinking of something else now?" she asked him.
"Yes.
My work."
"I wish we had horses to ride," Maria said.
"In my happiness I would like to be on a good horse and ride fast with thee riding fast beside me and we would ride faster and faster, galloping, and never pass my happiness."
"We could take thy happiness in a plane," he said absently.
"And go over and over in the sky like the little pursuit planes shining in the sun," she said.
"Rolling it in loops and in dives. _Que bueno!_" she laughed.
"My happiness would not even notice it."
"Thy happiness has a good stomach," he said half hearing what she said.
Because now he was not there.
He was walking beside her but his mind was thinking of the problem of the bridge now and it was all clear and hard and sharp as when a camera lens is brought into focus.
He saw the two posts and Anselmo and the gypsy watching.
He saw the road empty and he saw movement on it.
He saw where he would place the two automatic rifles to get the most level field of fire, and who will serve them, he thought, me at the end, but who at the start?
He placed the charges, wedged and lashed them, sunk his caps and crimped them, ran his wires, hooked them up and got back to where he had placed the old box of the exploder and then he started to think of all the things that could have happened and that might go wrong.
Stop it, he told himself.
You have made love to this girl and now your head is clear, properly clear, and you start to worry.
It is one thing to think you must do and it is another thing to worry.
Don't worry.
You mustn't worry.
You know the things that you may have to do and you know what may happen.
Certainly it may happen.
You went into it knowing what you were fighting for.
You were fighting against exactly what you were doing and being forced into doing to have any chance of winning.
So now he was compelled to use these people whom he liked as you should use troops toward whom you have no feeling at all if you were to be successful.
Pablo was evidently the smartest.
He knew how bad it was instantly.
The woman was all for it, and still was; but the realization of what it really consisted in had overcome her steadily and it had done plenty to her already.
Sordo recognized it instantly and would do it but he did not like it any more than he, Robert Jordan, liked it.
So you say that it is not that which will happen to yourself but that which may happen to the woman and the girl and to the others that you think of.
All right.
What would have happened to them if you had not come?
What happened to them and what passed with them before you were ever here?
You must not think in that way.
You have no responsibility for them except in action.
The orders do not come from you.
They come from Golz.
And who is Golz?
A good general.
The best you've ever served under.
But should a man carry out impossible orders knowing what they lead to?
Even though they come from Golz, who is the party as well as the army?
Yes.
He should carry them out because it is only in the performing of them that they can prove to be impossible.