For I must be up long before daylight and the dawn comes early in this month."
"Then it is all right about the last thing I said?
We can still be married?"
"We are married, now.
I marry thee now.
Thou art my wife.
But go to sleep, my rabbit, for there is little time now."
"And we will truly be married?
Not just a talking?"
"Truly."
"Then I will sleep and think of that if I wake."
"I, too."
"Good night, my husband."
"Good night," he said.
"Good night, wife."
He heard her breathing steadily and regularly now and he knew she was asleep and he lay awake and very still not wanting to waken her by moving.
He thought of all the part she had not told him and he lay there hating and he was pleased there would be killing in the morning.
But I must not take any of it personally, he thought.
Though how can I keep from it?
I know that we did dreadful things to them too.
But it was because we were uneducated and knew no better.
But they did that on purpose and deliberately.
Those who did that are the last flowering of what their education has produced.
Those are the flowers of Spanish chivalry.
What a people they have been.
What sons of bitches from Cortez, Pizarro, Menendez de Avila all down through Enrique Lister to Pablo.
And what wonderful people.
There is no finer and no worse people in the world.
No kinder people and no crueler.
And who understands them?
Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.
To understand is to forgive.
That's not true.
Forgiveness has been exaggerated.
Forgiveness is a Christian idea and Spain has never been a Christian country.
It has always had its own special idol worship within the Church. _Otra Virgen mas_.
I suppose that was why they had to destroy the virgins of their enemies.
Surely it was deeper with them, with the Spanish religion fanatics, than it was with the people.
The people had grown away from the Church because the Church was in the government and the government had always been rotten.
This was the only country that the reformation never reached.
They were paying for the Inquisition now, all right.
Well, it was something to think about.
Something to keep your mind from worrying about your work.
It was sounder than pretending.
God, he had done a lot of pretending tonight.
And Pilar had been pretending all day.
Sure.
What if they were killed tomorrow?
What did it matter as long as they did the bridge properly?
That was all they had to do tomorrow.