'Are they sleeping?'
'No', she said. 'But I could support it no longer. And What importance has it?'
'None', he said, and felt her against him, slim and long and warmly lovely. 'No other thing has importance.'
'Take off thy shirt', he said.
'You think I should?'
'Yes, if you will not be cold."
'Que vá, cold. I am on fire.'
'I too. But afterwards won't you be cold?'
'No. Afterwards we will be as one animal of the forest and be so close that neither one can tell that one of us is one and not the other.'

...

'Oh, maria. Maria. Maria'
Then afterwards, close, with the night cold outside, in the long warmth of the robe, her head touching  his ceek, she lay quiet and happy against him.
'I love thee and I love thy name, Maria,'
'I fell the same', she said. And then 'Now should we sleep? I could sleep easily.'
'Let us sleep,' he said, and he felt the long light body, warm against him, comforting against him, abolishing loneliness against him, magically, by a simple touching of flanks, of shoulders, and of feet, making an alliance against death with him, and he said, 'Sleep well, beloved.'
And in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true. But she was sleeping well and soundly and she did not wake. So he rolled away on to his side and pulled the robe over her head and kissed her once on her neck under the robe and then pulled the pistol lanyard up and put the pistol by his side where he could reach it handily and then he lay there in the night thinking.