The red mark of her hand showed plainly on his white tired face. He said nothing, but lifted her limp hand to his lips and kissed it.Then he was gone before she could speak again, closing the door softly behind him.
She sat down again very suddenly, the reaction from her rage making herknees feel weak. He was gone and the memory of his stricken face would haunt her till she died.
She heard the soft muffled sound of his footsteps dying away down the long hall, and the complete enormity of her actions came over her. She had lost him forever.Now he would hate her and every time he looked at her he would remember how she threw herself at him when he had given her no encouragement at all.
“I'm as bad as Honey Wilkes,”she thought suddenly, and remembered how everyone, and she more than anyone else, had laughed contemptuously at Honey's forward conduct. She saw Honey's awkward wigglings and heard her silly titters as she hung onto boys'arms, and the thought stung her to new rage, rage at herself, at Ashley, at the world.Because she hated herself, she hated them all with the fury of the thwarted and humiliated love of sixteen.Only a little true tenderness had been mixed into her love.Mostly it had been compounded out of vanity and complacent confidence in her own charms.Now she had lost and, greater than her sense of loss, was the fear that she had made a public spectacle of herself.Had she been as obvious as Honey?Was everyone laughing at her?She began to shake at the thought.
Her hand dropped to a little table beside her, fingering a tiny china rose-bowl on which two china cherubs smirked. The room was so still she almost screamed to break the silence.She must do something or go mad.She picked up the bowl and hurled it viciously across the room toward the fireplace.It barely cleared the tall back of the sofa and splintered with a little crash against the marble mantelpiece.
“This,”said a voice from the depths of the sofa,“is too much.”
Nothing had ever startled or frightened her so much, and her mouth went too dry for her to utter a sound. She caught hold of the back of the chair, her knees going weak under her, as Rhett Butler rose from the sofa where he had been lying and made her a bow of exaggerated politeness.
“It is bad enough to have an afternoon nap disturbed by such a passage as I've been forced to hear, but why should my life be endangered?”
He was real. He wasn't a ghost.But, saints preserve us, he had heard everything!She rallied her forces into a semblance of dignity.
“Sir, you should have made known your presence.”
“Indeed?”His white teeth gleamed and his bold dark eyes laughed at her.“But you were the intruder. I was forced to wait for Mr.Kennedy, and feeling that I was perhaps persona non grata in the back yard, I was thoughtful enough to remove my unwelcome presence here where I thought I would be undisturbed.But, alas!”he shrugged and laughed softly.
Her temper was beginning to rise again at the thought that this rude and impertinent man had heard everything—heard things she now wished she had died before she ever uttered.
“Eavesdroppers—”she began furiously.
“Eavesdroppers often hear highly entertaining and instructive things,”he grinned.“From a long experience in eavesdropping, I—”
“Sir,”she said,“you are no gentleman!”
“An apt observation,”he answered airily.“And, you, Miss, are no lady.”He seemed to find her very amusing, for he laughed softly again.“No one Can remain a lady after saying and doing what I have just overheard. However, ladies have seldom held any charms for me.I know what they are thinking, but they never have the courage or lack of breeding to say what they think.And that, in time, becomes a bore.But you, my dear Miss O'Hara, are a girl of rare spirit, very admirable spirit, and I take off my hat to you.I fail to understand what charms the elegant Mr.Wilkes can hold for a girl of your tempestuous nature.He should thank God on bended knee for a girl with your—how did he put it?—‘passion for living,'but being a poor-spirited wretch—”
“You aren't fit to wipe his boots!”she shouted in rage.
“And you were going to hate him all your life!”He sank down on the sofa and she heard him laughing.
If she could have killed him, she would have done it. Instead, she walked out of the room with such dignity as she could summon and banged the heavy door behind her.
She went up the stairs so swiftly that when she reached the landing, she thought she was going to faint. She stopped, clutching the banisters, her heart hammering so hard from anger, insult and exertion that it seemed about to burst through her basque.She tried to draw deep breaths but Mammy's lacings weretoo they tight.If she should faint and they should find her here on the landing, what would they think?Oh, they'd think everything, Ashley and that vile Butler man and those nasty girls who were so jealous!For once in her life, she wished that she carried smelling salts, like the other girls, but she had never even owned a vinaigrette.She had always been so proud of never feeling giddy.She simply could not let herself faint now!
Gradually the sickening feeling began to depart. In a minute, she'd feel all right and then she'd slip quietly into the little dressing room adjoining India's room, unloose her stays and creep in and lay herself on one of the beds beside the sleeping girls.She tried to quiet her heart and fix her face into more composed lines, for she knew she must look like a crazy woman.If any of the girls were awake, they'd know something was wrong.And no one must ever, ever know that anything had happened.