And after I offered up myself for my country and fought barefooted in the snow at Franklin and got the finest case of dysentery you ever heard of for my pains!"
"I don't want to hear about your--pains," she said, still pouting but smiling at him from up-tilted eyes.
"I still think you were hateful that night and I never expect to forgive you.
Leaving me alone like that when anything might have happened to me!"
"But nothing did happen to you.
So, you see, my confidence in you was justified.
I knew you'd get home safely and God help any Yankee who got in your way!"
"Rhett, why on earth did you do such a silly thing--enlisting at the last minute when you knew we were going to get licked?
And after all you'd said about idiots who went out and got shot!"
"Scarlett, spare me!
I am always overcome with shame when I think about it."
"Well, I'm glad to learn you are ashamed of the way you treated me."
"You misunderstand.
I regret to say that my conscience has not troubled me at all about deserting you.
But as for enlisting--when I think of joining the army in varnished boots and a white linen suit and armed with only a pair of dueling pistols-- And those long cold miles in the snow after my boots wore out and I had no overcoat and nothing to eat . . . I cannot understand why I did not desert.
It was all the purest insanity.
But it's in one's blood.
Southerners can never resist a losing cause.
But never mind my reasons.
It's enough that I'm forgiven."
"You're not.
I think you're a hound."
But she caressed the last word until it might have been "darling."
"Don't fib.
You've forgiven me.
Young ladies don't dare Yankee sentries to see a prisoner, just for charity's sweet sake, and come all dressed up in velvet and feathers and seal muffs too.
Scarlett, how pretty you look!
Thank God, you aren't in rags or mourning!
I get so sick of women in dowdy old clothes and perpetual crepe.
You look like the Rue de la Paix.
Turn around, my dear, and let me look at you."
So he had noticed the dress.
Of course, he would notice such things, being Rhett.
She laughed in soft excitement and spun about on her toes, her arms extended, her hoops tilting up to show her lace trimmed pantalets.
His black eyes took her in from bonnet to heels in a glance that missed nothing, that old impudent unclothing glance which always gave her goose bumps.
"You look very prosperous and very, very tidy.
And almost good enough to eat.
If it wasn't for the Yankees outside--but you are quite safe, my dear.
Sit down.
I won't take advantage of you as I did the last time I saw you."
He rubbed his cheek with pseudo ruefulness.
"Honestly, Scarlett, don't you think you were a bit selfish that night?
Think of all I had done for you, risked my life--stolen a horse--and such a horse!
Rushed to the defense of Our Glorious Cause!
And what did I get for my pains?
Some hard words and a very hard slap in the face."
She sat down.
The conversation was not going in quite the direction she hoped.
He had seemed so nice when he first saw her, so genuinely glad she had come.
He had almost seemed like a human being and not the perverse wretch she knew so well.