Otherwise it is like the rose."
Robert Jordan grinned at him with his mouth full.
"Like the rose," he said.
"Mighty like the rose.
A rose is a rose is an onion."
"Thy onions are affecting thy brain," Agustin said.
"Take care."
"An onion is an onion is an onion," Robert Jordan said cheerily and, he thought, a stone is a stein is a rock is a boulder is a pebble.
"Rinse thy mouth with wine," Agustin said.
"Thou art very rare, _Ingles_.
There is great difference between thee and the last dynamiter who worked with us."
"There is one great difference."
"Tell it to me."
"I am alive and he is dead," Robert Jordan said.
Then: what's the matter with you? he thought.
Is that the way to talk?
Does food make you that slap happy?
What are you, drunk on onions?
Is that all it means to you, now?
It never meant much, he told himself truly.
You tried to make it mean something, but it never did.
There is no need to lie in the time that is left.
"No," he said, seriously now.
"That one was a man who had suffered greatly."
"And thou?
Hast thou not suffered?"
"No," said Robert Jordan.
"I am of those who suffer little."
"Me also," Agustin told him.
"There are those who suffer and those who do not.
I suffer very little."
"Less bad," Robert Jordan tipped up the wineskin again.
"And with this, less."
"I suffer for others."
"As all good men should."
"But for myself very little."
"Hast thou a wife?"
"No."
"Me neither."
"But now you have the Maria."
"Yes."
"There is a rare thing," Agustin said.
"Since she came to us at the train the Pilar has kept her away from all as fiercely as though she were in a convent of Carmelites.
You cannot imagine with what fierceness she guarded her.
You come, and she gives her to thee as a present.
How does that seem to thee?"
"It was not thus."
"How was it, then?"
"She has put her in my care."
"And thy care is to _joder_ with her all night?"