Interest in it."

"Whatever would I do with a sawmill?"

"Make money! We can make loads of money. Or I'll pay you interest

on the loan--let's see, what is good interest?"

"Fifty per cent is considered very fine."

"Fifty--oh, but you are joking! Stop laughing, you devil. I'm

serious."

"That's why I'm laughing. I wonder if anyone but me realizes what

goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face."

"Well, who cares? Listen, Rhett, and see if this doesn't sound

like good business to you. Frank told me about this man who has a

sawmill, a little one out Peachtree road, and he wants to sell it.

He's got to have cash money pretty quick and he'll sell it cheap.

There aren't many sawmills around here now, and the way people are

rebuilding--why, we could sell lumber sky high. The man will stay

and run the mill for a wage. Frank told me about it. Frank would

buy the mill himself if he had the money. I guess he was intending

buying it with the money he gave me for the taxes."

"Poor Frank! What is he going to say when you tell him you've

bought it yourself right out from under him? And how are you going

to explain my lending you the money without compromising your

reputation?"

Scarlett had given no thought to this, so intent was she upon the

money the mill would bring in.

"Well, I just won't tell him."

"He'll know you didn't pick it off a bush."

"I'll tell him--why, yes, I'll tell him I sold you my diamond

earbobs. And I will give them to you, too. That'll be my collat--

my whatchucallit."

"I wouldn't take your earbobs."

"I don't want them. I don't like them. They aren't really mine,

anyway."

"Whose are they?"

Her mind went swiftly back to the still hot noon with the country

hush deep about Tara and the dead man in blue sprawled in the hall.

"They were left with me--by someone who's dead. They're mine all

right. Take them. I don't want them. I'd rather have the money

for them."

"Good Lord!" he cried impatiently. "Don't you ever think of

anything but money?"

"No," she replied frankly, turning hard green eyes upon him. "And

if you'd been through what I have, you wouldn't either. I've found

out that money is the most important thing in the world and, as God

is my witness, I don't ever intend to be without it again."

She remembered the hot sun, the soft red earth under her sick head,

the niggery smell of the cabin behind the ruins of Twelve Oaks,

remembered the refrain her heart had beaten: "I'll never be hungry

again. I'll never be hungry again."

"I'm going to have money some day, lots of it, so I can have

anything I want to eat. And then there'll never be any hominy or

dried peas on my table. And I'm going to have pretty clothes and

all of them are going to be silk--"

"All?"

"All," she said shortly, not even troubling to blush at his

implication. "I'm going to have money enough so the Yankees can

never take Tara away from me. And I'm going to have a new roof for

Tara and a new barn and fine mules for plowing and more cotton than

you ever saw. And Wade isn't ever going to know what it means to

do without the things he needs. Never! He's going to have

everything in the world. And all my family, they aren't ever going

to be hungry again. I mean it. Every word. You don't understand,

you're such a selfish hound. You've never had the Carpetbaggers

trying to drive you out. You've never been cold and ragged and had

to break your back to keep from starving!"

He said quietly: "I was in the Confederate Army for eight months.

I don't know any better place for starving."

"The army! Bah! You've never had to pick cotton and weed corn.

You've-- Don't you laugh at me!"

His hands were on hers again as her voice rose harshly.

"I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at the difference in

what you look and what you really are. And I was remembering the

first time I ever saw you, at the barbecue at the Wilkes'. You had

on a green dress and little green slippers, and you were knee deep

in men and quite full of yourself. I'll wager you didn't know then

how many pennies were in a dollar. There was only one idea in your

whole mind then and that was ensnaring Ash--"

She jerked her hands away from him.

"Rhett, if we are to get on at all, you'll have to stop talking

about Ashley Wilkes. We'll always fall out about him, because you

can't understand him."

"I suppose you understand him like a book," said Rhett maliciously.

"No, Scarlett, if I am to lend you the money I reserve the right to

discuss Ashley Wilkes in any terms I care to. I waive the right to

collect interest on my loan but not that right. And there are a

number of things about that young man I'd like to know."

"I do not have to discuss him with you," she answered shortly.

"Oh, but you do! I hold the purse strings, you see. Some day when

you are rich, you can have the power to do the same to others. . . .