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to come back and find you. I cared so much I believe I would have
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killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn't died when he did. I loved you
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but I couldn't let you know it. You're so brutal to those who love
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you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads
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like a whip."
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Out of it all only the fact that he loved her meant anything. At
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the faint echo of passion in his voice, pleasure and excitement
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crept back into her. She sat, hardly breathing, listening,
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waiting.
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"I knew you didn't love me when I married you. I knew about
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Ashley, you see. But, fool that I was, I thought I could make you
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care. Laugh, if you like, but I wanted to take care of you, to pet
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you, to give you everything you wanted. I wanted to marry you and
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protect you and give you a free rein in anything that would make
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you happy--just as I did Bonnie. You'd had such a struggle,
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Scarlett. No one knew better than I what you'd gone through and I
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wanted you to stop fighting and let me fight for you. I wanted you
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to play, like a child--for you were a child, a brave, frightened,
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bullheaded child. I think you are still a child. No one but a
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child could be so headstrong and so insensitive."
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His voice was calm and tired but there was something in the quality
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of it that raised a ghost of memory in Scarlett. She had heard a
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voice like this once before and at some other crisis of her life.
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Where had it been? The voice of a man facing himself and his world
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without feeling, without flinching, without hope.
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Why--why--it had been Ashley in the wintry, windswept orchard at
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Tara, talking of life and shadow shows with a tired calmness that
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had more finality in its timbre than any desperate bitterness could
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have revealed. Even as Ashley's voice then had turned her cold
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with dread of things she could not understand, so now Rhett's voice
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made her heart sink. His voice, his manner, more than the content
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of his words, disturbed her, made her realize that her pleasurable
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excitement of a few moments ago had been untimely. Something was
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wrong, badly wrong. What it was she did not know but she listened
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desperately, her eyes on his brown face, hoping to hear words that
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would dissipate her fears.
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"It was so obvious that we were meant for each other. So obvious
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that I was the only man of your acquaintance who could love you
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after knowing you as you really are--hard and greedy and
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unscrupulous, like me. I loved you and I took the chance. I
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thought Ashley would fade out of your mind. But," he shrugged, "I
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tried everything I knew and nothing worked. And I loved you so,
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Scarlett. If you had only let me, I could have loved you as gently
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and as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman. But I couldn't let
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you know, for I knew you'd think me weak and try to use my love
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against me. And always--always there was Ashley. It drove me
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crazy. I couldn't sit across the table from you every night,
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knowing you wished Ashley was sitting there in my place. And I
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couldn't hold you in my arms at night and know that--well, it
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doesn't matter now. I wonder, now, why it hurt. That's what drove
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me to Belle. There is a certain swinish comfort in being with a
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woman who loves you utterly and respects you for being a fine
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gentleman--even if she is an illiterate whore. It soothed my
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vanity. You've never been very soothing, my dear."
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"Oh, Rhett . . ." she began, miserable at the very mention of
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Belle's name, but he waved her to silence and went on.
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"And then, that night when I carried you upstairs--I thought--I
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hoped--I hoped so much I was afraid to face you the next morning,
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for fear I'd been mistaken and you didn't love me. I was so afraid
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you'd laugh at me I went off and got drunk. And when I came back,
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I was shaking in my boots and if you had come even halfway to meet
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me, had given me some sign, I think I'd have kissed your feet. But
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you didn't."
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"Oh, but Rhett, I did want you then but you were so nasty! I did
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want you! I think--yes, that must have been when I first knew I
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cared about you. Ashley--I never was happy about Ashley after
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that, but you were so nasty that I--"
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"Oh, well," he said. "It seems we've been at cross purposes,
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doesn't it? But it doesn't matter now. I'm only telling you, so
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you won't ever wonder about it all. When you were sick and it was
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all my fault, I stood outside your door, hoping you'd call for me,
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but you didn't, and then I knew what a fool I'd been and that it
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was all over."
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He stopped and looked through her and beyond her, even as Ashley
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had often done, seeing something she could not see. And she could
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only stare speechless at his brooding face.
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"But then, there was Bonnie and I saw that everything wasn't over,
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after all. I liked to think that Bonnie was you, a little girl
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again, before the war and poverty had done things to you. She was
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so like you, so willful, so brave and gay and full of high spirits,
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and I could pet her and spoil her--just as I wanted to pet you.
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But she wasn't like you--she loved me. It was a blessing that I
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could take the love you didn't want and give it to her. . . . When
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she went, she took everything."
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Suddenly she was sorry for him, sorry with a completeness that
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wiped out her own grief and her fear of what his words might mean.
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It was the first time in her life she had been sorry for anyone
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without feeling contemptuous as well, because it was the first time
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