"How sweet of you to say that! For I was so ashamed to let you see me --"
"You ashamed? Why should you be ashamed? I'm the one to feel shame and I do. If it hadn't been for my stupidity you wouldn't be in this fix. You'd never have married Frank. I should never have let you leave Tara last winter. Oh, fool that I was! I should have known you -- known you were desperate, so desperate that you'd -- I should have -- I should have --" His face went haggard.
Scarlett's heart beat wildly. He was regretting that he had not run away with her!
"The least I could have done was go out and commit highway robbery or murder to get the tax money for you when you had taken us in as beggars. Oh, I messed it up all the way around!"
Her heart contracted with disappointment and some of the happiness went from her, for these were not the words she hoped to hear.
"I would have gone anyway," she said tiredly. "I couldn't have let you do anything like that. And anyway, it's done now."
"Yes, it's done now," he said with slow bitterness. "You wouldn't have let me do anything dishonorable but you would sell yourself to a man you didn't love -- and bear his child, so that my family and I wouldn't starve. It was kind of you to shelter my helplessness."
The edge in his voice spoke of a raw, unhealed wound that ached within him and his words brought shame to her eyes. He was swift to see it and his face changed to gentleness.
"You didn't think I was blaming you? Dear God, Scarlett! No. You are the bravest woman I've ever known. It's myself I'm blaming."
He turned and looked out of the window again and the shoulders presented to her gaze did not look quite so square. Scarlett waited a long moment in silence, hoping that Ashley would return to the mood in which he spoke of her beauty, hoping he would say more words that she could treasure. It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin. She knew he still loved her. That fact was evident, in every line of him, in every bitter, self-condemnatory word, in his resentment at her bearing Frank's child. She so longed to hear him say it in words, longed to speak words herself that would provoke a confession, but she dared not. She remembered her promise given last winter in the orchard, that she would never again throw herself at his head. Sadly she knew that promise must be kept if Ashley were to remain near her. One cry from her of love and longing, one look that pleaded for his arms, and the matter would be settled forever. Ashley would surely go to New York. And he must not go away.
"Oh, Ashley, don't blame yourself! How could it be your fault? You will come to Atlanta and help me, won't you?"
"No."
"But, Ashley," her voice was beginning to break with anguish and disappointment, "But I'd counted on you. I do need you so. Frank can't help me. He's so busy with the store and if you don't come I don't know where I can get a man! Everybody in Atlanta who is smart is busy with his own affairs and the others are so incompetent and --"
"It's no use, Scarlett."
"You mean you'd rather go to New York and live among Yankees than come to Atlanta?"
"Who told you that?" He turned and faced her, faint annoyance wrinkling his forehead.
"Will."
"Yes, I've decided to go North. An old friend who made the Grand Tour with me before the war has offered me a position in his father's bank. It's better so, Scarlett. I'd be no good to you. I know nothing of the lumber business."
"But you know less about banking and it's much harder! And I know I'd make far more allowances for your inexperience than Yankees would!"
He winced and she knew she had said the wrong thing. He turned and looked out of the window again.
"I don't want allowances made for me. I want to stand on my own feet for what I'm worth. What have I done with my life, up till now? It's time I made something of myself -- or went down through my own fault. I've been your pensioner too long already."
"But I'm offering you a half-interest in the mill, Ashley! You would be standing on your own feet because -- you see, it would be your own business."
"It would amount to the same thing. I'd not be buying the half-interest I'd be taking it as a gift And I've taken too many gifts from you already, Scarlett -- food and shelter and even clothes for myself and Melanie and the baby. And I've given you nothing in return."
"Oh, but you have! Will couldn't have --"
"I can split kindling very nicely now."
"Oh, Ashley!" she cried despairingly, tears in her eyes at the jeering note in his voice. "What has happened to you since I've been gone? You sound so hard and bitter! You didn't used to be this way."
"What's happened? A very remarkable thing, Scarlett. I've been thinking. I don't believe I really thought from the time of the surrender until you went away from here. I was in a state of suspended animation and it was enough that I had something to eat and a bed to lie on. But when you went to Atlanta, shouldering a man's burden, I saw myself as much less than a man -- much less, indeed, than a woman. Such thoughts aren't pleasant to live with and I do not intend to live with them any longer. Other men came out of the war with less than I had, and look at them now. So I'm going to New York."
"But -- I don't understand! If it's work you want, why won't Atlanta do as well as New York? And my mill --"
"No, Scarlett This is my last chance. I'll go North. If I go to Atlanta and work for you, I'm lost forever."
The word "lost -- lost -- lost" dinged frighteningly in her heart like a death bell sounding. Her eyes went quickly to his but they were wide and crystal gray and they were looking through her and beyond her at some fate she could not see, could not understand.