No, I never intend to change more than my spots.
But I want the outer semblance of the things I used to know, the utter boredom of respectability--other people's respectability, my pet, not my own--the calm dignity life can have when it's lived by gentle folks, the genial grace of days that are gone.
When I lived those days I didn't realize the slow charm of them--"
Again Scarlett was back in the windy orchard of Tara and there was the same look in Rhett's eyes that had been in Ashley's eyes that day.
Ashley's words were as clear in her ears as though he and not Rhett were speaking.
Fragments of words came back to her and she quoted parrot-like:
"A glamor to it--a perfection, a symmetry like Grecian art."
Rhett said sharply: "Why did you say that?
That's what I meant."
"It was something that--that Ashley said once, about the old days."
He shrugged and the light went out of his eyes.
"Always Ashley," he said and was silent for a moment.
"Scarlett, when you are forty-five, perhaps you will know what I'm talking about and then perhaps you, too, will be tired of imitation gentry and shoddy manners and cheap emotions.
But I doubt it.
I think you'll always be more attracted by glister than by gold.
Anyway, I can't wait that long to see.
And I have no desire to wait.
It just doesn't interest me.
I'm going to hunt in old towns and old countries where some of the old times must still linger.
I'm that sentimental.
Atlanta's too raw for me, too new."
"Stop," she said suddenly.
She had hardly heard anything he had said.
Certainly her mind had not taken it in.
But she knew she could no longer endure with any fortitude the sound of his voice when there was no love in it.
He paused and looked at her quizzically.
"Well, you get my meaning, don't you?" he questioned, rising to his feet.
She threw out her hands to him, palms up, in the age-old gesture of appeal and her heart, again, was in her face.
"No," she cried.
"All I know is that you do not love me and you are going away!
Oh, my darling, if you go, what shall I do?"
For a moment he hesitated as if debating whether a kind lie were kinder in the long run than the truth.
Then he shrugged.
"Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new.
What is broken is broken--and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.
Perhaps, if I were younger--" he sighed.
"But I'm too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.
I'm too old to shoulder the burden of constant lies that go with living in polite disillusionment.
I couldn't live with you and lie to you and I certainly couldn't lie to myself.
I can't even lie to you now.
I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can't."
He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly: "My dear, I don't give a damn."
* * * * * She silently watched him go up the stairs, feeling that she would strangle at the pain in her throat.
With the sound of his feet dying away in the upper hall was dying the last thing in the world that mattered.
She knew now that there was no appeal of emotion or reason which would turn that cool brain from its verdict.
She knew now that he had meant every word he said, lightly though some of them had been spoken.
She knew because she sensed in him something strong, unyielding, implacable--all the qualities she had looked for in Ashley and never found.
She had never understood either of the men she had loved and so she had lost them both.
Now, she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him.
She wondered forlornly if she had ever really understood anyone in the world.