The girl sat by her in the heather, the sun shining on her hair.
Only Robert Jordan stood looking across the high mountain meadow with the trout brook running through it.
There was heather growing where he stood.
There were gray boulders rising from the yellow bracken that replaced the heather in the lower part of the meadow and below was the dark line of the pines.
"How far is it to El Sordo's?" he asked.
"Not far," the woman said.
"It is across this open country, down into the next valley and above the timber at the head of the stream.
Sit thee down and forget thy seriousness."
"I want to see him and get it over with."
"I want to bathe my feet," the woman said and, taking off her rope-soled shoes and pulling off a heavy wool stocking, she put her right foot into the stream.
"My God, it's cold."
"We should have taken horses," Robert Jordan told her.
"This is good for me," the woman said.
"This is what I have been missing.
What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing, except that I am in a hurry."
"Then calm yourself.
There is much time.
What a day it is and how I am contented not to be in pine trees.
You cannot imagine how one can tire of pine trees.
Aren't you tired of the pines, _guapa?_"
"I like them," the girl said.
"What can you like about them?"
"I like the odor and the feel of the needles under foot.
I like the wind in the high trees and the creaking they make against each other."
"You like anything," Pilar said.
"You are a gift to any man if you could cook a little better.
But the pine tree makes a forest of boredom.
Thou hast never known a forest of beech, nor of oak, nor of chestnut.
Those are forests.
In such forests each tree differs and there is character and beauty.
A forest of pine trees is boredom.
What do you say, Ingles?"
"I like the pines, too."
"_Pero, venga_," Pilar said.
"Two of you.
So do I like the pines, but we have been too long in these pines.
Also I am tired of the mountains.
In mountains there are only two directions. Down and up and down leads only to the road and the towns of the Fascists."
"Do you ever go to Segovia?"
"_Que va_.
With this face?
This is a face that is known.
How would you like to be ugly, beautiful one?" she said to Maria.
"Thou art not ugly."
"_Vamos_, I'm not ugly.
I was born ugly.
All my life I have been ugly.
You, _Ingles_, who know nothing about women.
Do you know how an ugly woman feels?