be cold with fright and so

“I’m hungry and everybody, Pa and the girls and the darkies, are starving and they keep saying over and over: ‘We’re hungry’ and I’m so empty it hurts, and so frightened. My mind keeps saying: ‘If I ever get out of this, I’ll never, never be hungry again’ and then the dream goes off into a gray mist and I’m running, running in the mist, running so hard my heart’s about to burst and something is chasing me, and I can’t breathe but I keep thinking that if I can just get there, I’ll be safe. But I don’t know where I’m trying to get to. And then I’d wake up and I’d be cold with fright and so afraid that I’d be hungry again. When I wake up from that dream, it seems like there’s not enough money in the world to keep me from being afraid of being hungry again. And then Frank would be so mealy mouthed and slow poky that he would make me mad and I’d lose my temper. He didn’t understand, I guess, and I couldn’t make him understand. I kept thinking that I’d make it up to him some day when we had money and I wasn’t so afraid of being hungry. And now he’s dead and it’s too late. Oh, it seemed so right when I did it but it was all so wrong. If I had it to do over again, I’d do it so differently.” 　“Hush,” he said, disentangling her frantic grip and pulling a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “Wipe your face. There is no sense in your tearing yourself to pieces this way.” 　She took the handkerchief and wiped her damp cheeks, a little relief stealing over her as if she had shifted some of her burden to his broad shoulders. He looked so capable and calm and even the slight twist of his mouth was comforting as though it proved her agony and confusion unwarranted. 　“Feel better now? Then let’s get to the bottom of this. You say if you had it to do over again, you’d do it differently. But would you? Think, now. Would you?” 　“Well—” 　“No, you’d do the same things again. Did you have any other choice?” 　“No.” 　“Then what are you sorry about?” 　“I was so mean and now he’s dead.” 　“And if he wasn’t dead, you’d still be mean. As I understand it, you are not really sorry for marrying Frank and bullying him and inadvertently causing his death. You are only sorry because you are afraid of going to hell. Is that right?” 　“Well—that sounds so mixed up.” 　“Your ethics are considerably mixed up too. You are in the exact position of a thief who’s been caught red handed and isn’t sorry he stole but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.” 　“A thief—” 　“Oh, don’t be so literal! In other words if you didn’t have this silly idea that you were damned to hell fire eternal, you’d think you were well rid of Frank.” 　“Oh, Rhett!”