The pictures collided on a backdrop of blue.

Dear,” he said quietly, “I am complimenting your intelligence by asking you to be my mistress without having first seduced you.”

Mistress! Her mind shouted the word, shouted that she had been vilely insulted. But in that first startled moment she did not feel insulted. She only felt a furious surge of indignation that he should think her such a fool.

Rage, punctured vanity and dissapointment threw her mind into a turmoil and, before she even thought of the high moral grounds on which she should upbraid him, she blurted out the first words which came to her lips -

“Mistress! What would I get out of that except a passel of brats!”

And then her jaw dropped in horror as she realized what she had said.

He laughed until he choked, peering at her in the shadows as she sat, stricken dumb, pressing her handkerchief to her mouth.

“That’s why I like you! You are the only frank woman I know, the only woman who looks on the practical side of the matters without beclouding the issue with mouthings about sin and morality. Any other woman would have swooned first and then shown me the door.

—

Gone with the Wind, pg 329.

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