Always a little hasty, but sound.
Once you accept the idea of demolition as a problem it is only a problem.
But there was plenty that was not so good that went with it although God knows you took it easily enough.
There was the constant attempt to approximate the conditions of successful assassination that accompanied the demolition.
Did big words make it more defensible?
Did they make killing any more palatable?
You took to it a little too readily if you ask me, he told himself.
And what you will be like or just exactly what you will be suited for when you leave the service of the Republic is, to me, he thought, extremely doubtful.
But my guess is you will get rid of all that by writing about it, he said.
Once you write it down it is all gone.
It will be a good book if you can write it.
Much better than the other.
But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you had better take what time there is and be very thankful for it.
If the bridge goes bad.
It does not look too good just now.
But Maria has been good.
Has she not?
Oh, has she not, he thought.
Maybe that is what I am to get now from life.
Maybe that is my life and instead of it being threescore years and ten it is fortyeight hours or just threescore hours and ten or twelve rather.
Twenty-four hours in a day would be threescore and twelve for the three full days.
I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years; granted that your life has been full up to the time that the seventy hours start and that you have reached a certain age.
What nonsense, he thought.
What rot you get to thinking by yourself.
That is _really_ nonsense.
And maybe it isn't nonsense too.
Well, we will see.
The last time I slept with a girl was in Madrid.
No it wasn't. It was in the Escorial and, except that I woke in the night and thought it was some one else and was excited until I realized who it really was, it was just dragging ashes; except that it was pleasant enough.
And the time before that was in Madrid and except for some lying and pretending I did to myself as to identity while things were going on, it was the same or something less.
So I am no romantic glorifier of the Spanish Woman nor did I ever think of a casual piece as anything much other than a casual piece in any country.
But when I am with Maria I love her so that I feel, literally, as though I would die and I never believed in that nor thought that it could happen.
So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it.
And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.
Now, _ahora_, _maintenant_, _heute_. _Now_, it has a funny sound to be a whole world and your life. _Esta noche_, tonight, _ce soir_, _heute abend_.
Life and wife, _Vie_ and _Mari_.
No it didn't work out.
The French turned it into husband.
There was now and _frau_; but that did not prove anything either.
Take dead, _mort_, _muerto_, and _todt_. _Todt_ was the deadest of them all.
War, _guerre_, _guerra_, and _krieg_. _Krieg_ was the most like war, or was it?
Or was it only that he knew German the least well?
Sweetheart, _cherie_, _prenda_, and _schatz_.
He would trade them all for Maria.
There was a name.
Well, they would all be doing it together and it would not be long now.
It certainly looked worse all the time.
It was just something that you could not bring off in the morning.
In an impossible situation you hang on until night to get away. You try to last out until night to get back in. You are all right, maybe, if you can stick it out until dark and then get in.
So what if you start this sticking it out at daylight?