静かな撤退

“Of course, I’m all right. Rhett Butler, you are hateful, a skunk, if ever I saw one! You knew very well what I was going to say as soon as I started talking and you knew you weren’t going to give me

the money. And yet you let me go right on. You could have spared me—”
　“Spared you and missed hearing all that? Not much dermes . I have so few diversions here. I don’t know when I’ve ever heard anything so gratifying.” He laughed his sudden mocking laugh. At the sound she leaped

to her feet, snatching up her bonnet.
　He suddenly had her by the shoulders.
　“Not quite yet. Do you feel well enough to talk sense?”
　“Let me go!”
　“You are well enough, I see. Then, tell me this reenex . Was I the only iron you had in the fire?” His eyes were keen and alert, watching every change in her face.
　“What do you mean?”
　“Was I the only man you were going to try this on?”
　“Is that any of your business?”
　“More than you realize. Are there any other men on your string? Tell me!”
　“No.”
　“Incredible. I can’t imagine you without five or six in reserve. Surely someone will turn up to accept your interesting proposition. I feel so sure of it that I want to give you a little advice.”
　“I don’t want your advice.”
　“Nevertheless I will give it. Advice seems to be the only thing I can give you at present. Listen to it, for it’s good advice. When you are trying to get something out of a man, don’t blurt it out as

you did to me. Do try to be more subtle, more seductive. It gets better results. You used to know how, to perfection. But just now when you offered me your—er—collateral for my money you looked as hard as

nails. I’ve seen eyes like yours above a dueling pistol twenty paces from me and they aren’t a pleasant sight. They evoke no ardor in the male breast. That’s no way to handle men, my dear. You are

forgetting your early training.”
　“I don’t need you to tell me how to behave,” she said and wearily put on her bonnet. She wondered how he could jest so blithely with a rope about his neck and her pitiful circumstances before him. She

did not even notice that his hands were jammed in his pockets in hard fists as if he were straining at his own impotence.
　“Cheer up,” he said, as she tied the bonnet strings. “You can come to my hanging and it will make you feel lots better. It’ll even up all your old scores with me—even this one. And I’ll mention you

in my will.”
　“Thank you, but they may not hang you till it’s too late to pay the taxes,” she said with a sudden malice that matched his own, and she meant it.