Now the morning was late May, the sky was high and clear and the wind blew warm on Robert Jordan's shoulders. The snow was going fast and they were eating breakfast. There were two big sandwiches of meat and the goaty cheese apiece, and Robert Jordan had cut thick slices of onion with his clasp knife and put them on each side of the meat and cheese between the chunks of bread.
 "You will have a breath that will carry through the forest to the fascists," Agust璯 said, his own mouth full.
 "Give me the wineskin and I will rinse the mouth," Robert Jordan said, his mouth full of meat, cheese, onion and chewed bread.
 He had never been hungrier and he filled his mouth with wine, faintly tarry-tasting from the leather bag, and swallowed. Then he took another big mouthful of wine, lifting the bag up to let the jet of wine spurt into the back of his mouth, the wineskin touching the needles of the blind of pine branches that covered the automatic rifle as he lifted his hand, his head leaning against the pine branches as he bent it back to let the wine run down.
 "Dost thou want this other sandwich?" Agust璯 asked him, handing it toward him across the gun.
 "No. Thank you. Eat it."
 "I cannot. I am not accustomed to eat in the morning."
 "You do not want it, truly?"
 "Nay. Take it."
 Robert Jordan took it and laid it on his lap while he got the onion out of his side jacket pocket where the grenades were and opened his knife to slice it. He cut off a thin sliver of the surface that had dirtied in his pocket, then cut a thick slice. An outer segment fell and he picked it up and bent the circle together and put it into the sandwich.
 "Eatest thou always onions for breakfast?" Agust璯 asked.
 "When there are any."
 "Do all in thy country do this?"
 "Nay," Robert Jordan said. "It is looked on badly there."
 "I am glad," Agust璯 said. "I had always considered America a civilized country."
 "What hast thou against the onion?"
 "The odor. Nothing more. 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," Agust璯 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," Agust璯 said. "Thou art very rare, _Ingl廥_. 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," Agust璯 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," Agust璯 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?"
 "With luck."
 "What a manner to care for one."
 "You do not understand that one can take good care of one thus?"
 "Yes, but such care could have been furnished by any one of us."
 "Let us not talk of it any more," Robert Jordan said. "I care for her seriously."
 "Seriously?"
 "As there can be nothing more serious in this world."
 "And afterwards? After this of the bridge?"
 "She goes with me."
 "Then," Agust璯 said. "That no one speaks of it further and that the two of you go with all luck."
 He lifted the leather wine bag and took a long pull, then handed it to Robert Jordan.
 "One thing more, _Ingl廥_," he said.
 "Of course."
 "I have cared much for her, too."
 Robert Jordan put his hand on his shoulder.
 "Much," Agust璯 said. "Much. More than one is able to imagine."
 "I can imagine."
 "She has made an impression on me that does not dissipate."
 "I can imagine."
 "Look. I say this to thee in all seriousness."
 "Say it."
 "I have never touched her nor had anything to do with her but I care for her greatly. _Ingl廥_, do not treat her lightly. Because she sleeps with thee she is no whore."
 "I will care for her."
 "I believe thee. But more. You do not understand how such a girl would be if there had been n............