ll you that I am not sick. She knows about such things and she said to tell you that."
"She told you to tell me"
"Yes. I spoke to her and told her that I love you. I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before and I told Pilar and she said if I ever told you anything about anything, to tell you that I was not sick. The other thing she told me long ago. Soon after the train."
"What did she say"
"She said that nothing is done to oneself that one does not accept and that if I loved some one it would take it all away. I wished to die, you see."
"What she said is true."
"And now I am happy that I did not die. I am so happy that I did not die. And you can love me"
"Yes. I love you now."
"And I can be thy woman"
"I cannot have a woman doing what I ao. But thou art my woman now."
"If once I am, then I will keep on. Am I thy woman now"
"Yes, Maria. Yes, my little rabbit."
She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth and young and lovely with the warm, scalding coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, "And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone."