With thee."
"No, to a home."
"No.
No.
No.
With thee and I will be thy woman."
Now as they lay all that before had been shielded was unshielded.
Where there had been roughness of fabric all was smooth with a smoothness and firm rounded pressing and a long warm coolness, cool outside and warm within, long and light and closely holding, closely held, lonely, hollow-making with contours, happymaking, young and loving and now all warmly smooth with a hollowing, chest-aching, tight-held loneliness that was such that Robert Jordan felt he could not stand it and he said,
"Hast thou loved others?"
"Never."
Then suddenly, going dead in his arms,
"But things were done to me."
"By whom?"
"By various."
Now she lay perfectly quietly and as though her body were dead and turned her head away from him.
"Now you will not love me."
"I love you," he said.
But something had happened to him and she knew it.
"No," she said and her voice had gone dead and flat.
"Thou wilt not love me.
But perhaps thou wilt take me to the home.
And I will go to the home and I will never be thy woman nor anything."
"I love thee, Maria."
"No.
It is not true," she said.
Then as a last thing pitifully and hopefully. "But I have never kissed any man."
"Then kiss me now."
"I wanted to," she said.
"But I know not how.
Where things were done to me I fought until I could not see.
I fought until-- until--until one sat upon my head--and I bit him--and then they tied my mouth and held my arms behind my head--and others did things to me."
"I love thee, Maria," he said.
"And no one has done anything to thee.
Thee, they cannot touch.
No one has touched thee, little rabbit."
"You believe that?"
"I know it."
"And you can love me?" warm again against him now.
"I can love thee more."
"I will try to kiss thee very well."
"Kiss me a little."
"I do not know how."
"Just kiss me."
She kissed him on the cheek.
"No."
"Where do the noses go?
I always wondered where the noses would go."
"Look, turn thy head," and then their mouths were tight together and she lay close pressed against him and her mouth opened a little gradually and then, suddenly, holding her against him, he was happier than he had ever been, lightly, lovingly, exultingly, innerly happy and unthinking and untired and unworried and only feeling a great delight and he said, "My little rabbit.
My darling. My sweet.
My long lovely."