He still liked her tremendously and respected her for her cool good breeding, her book learning and all the sterling qualities she possessed. But, damn it, she was just so pallid and uninteresting and always the same, beside Scarlett’s bright and changeable charm.
I’ll lay you two to one she didn’t even know the fort was out there in the harbor, much less that it was full of Yankees until we shelled them out.
All she’ll know about is the balls she went to and the beaux she collected.”
She reminds me of a skinny hen perched on a chair, her eyes kind of bright and blank and scared, all ready to flap and squawk at the slightest move anybody makes.”
Abel was a shrewd, grave giant, illiterate, kind of heart, older than the other boys and with as good or better manners in the presence of ladies.he knew all about living outdoors, building fires in the rain, tracking animals and finding water.
He bore the honor gravely and with no untoward conceit, as though it were only his due.
they were as fiercely proud in their poverty as the planters were in their wealth, and they would accept nothing that smacked of charity from their rich neighbors.
The upshot of the matter was that every planter agreed to pay for equipping his own sons and a certain number of the others, but the manner of handling the arrangements was such that the less wealthy members of the outfit could accept horses and uniforms without offense to their honor.
As they picked their way across the red furrows and down the hill to the river
bottom in the deepening dusk, Brent yelled to his brother:
“Look, Stu! Don’t it seem like to you that Scarlett would have asked us to supper?”
Far across the long room before thehearth, the seven-foot sofa, Ashley’s favorite seat, reared its high back, like somehuge sleeping animal.
Oh, if only he would walk in on her now and take her in his arms, so she would be spared the need of saying anything.
How unutterably dear he was standing there with his eyes twinkling, all unaware of her excitement. She could not speak, but she put out a hand and drew him into the room. He entered, puzzled but interested. There was a tenseness about her, a glow in her eyes that he had never seen before, and even in the dim light he could see the rosy flush on her cheeks.
A thousand incoherent thoughts shot through her mind, and she could not catch a single one to mold into a word. She could only shake and look up into his face. Why didn’t he speak?
“Love isn’t enough to make a successful marriage when two people are as different as we are.Can’t I make you see that a marriage can’t go on in any sort of peace unless the two people are alike?”
Some one else had said that: “Like must marry like or there’ll be no happiness.”
Who was it? It seemed a million years since she had heard that, but it still did not make sense.
How could I help caring for you—you who have all the passion for life
that I have not? You who can love and hate with a violence impossible to me?
Why you are as elemental as fire and wind and wild things and I—”
She did not want to be fair, although she knew what he said was true. He had
never once crossed the borders of friendliness with her and, when she thought of this fresh anger rose, the anger of hurt pride and feminine vanity. She had run after him and he would have none of her. She did not want to be fair, although she knew what he said was true. He had never once crossed the borders of friendliness with her and, when she thought of this fresh anger rose, the anger of hurt pride and feminine vanity. She had run after him and he would have none of her. He preferred a whey-faced little fool like Melanie to her.
His face full of the mute misery of one forced to face realities when realities are
agonies.
He put out his hand toward her and, as he did, she slapped him across the face
with all the strength she had. The noise cracked like a whip in the still room and
suddenly her rage was gone, and there was desolation in her heart.
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