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He held her in a grip that made breathing difficult and his choking voice was in her ear.

“What will I do? I can’t—I can’t live without her!”

“I can’t either,” she thought, shuddering away from the picture of the long years to come, without Melanie. But she caught herself in a strong grasp. Ashley was depending on her, Melanie was depending on her. As once before, in the moonlight at Tara, drunk, exhausted, she had thought: “Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.” Well, her shoulders were strong and Ashley’s were not. She squared her shoulders for the load and with a calmness she was far from feeling, kissed his wet cheek without fever or longing or passion, only with cool gentleness.

“We shall manage—somehow,” she said.

A door opened with sudden violence into the hall and Dr. Meade called with sharp urgency:

“Ashley! Quick!”

“My God! She’s gone!” thought Scarlett “And Ashley didn’t get to tell her good-by! But maybe—”

“Hurry!” she cried aloud, giving him a push, for he stood staring like one stunned. “Hurry!”

She pulled open the door and motioned him through. Galvanized by her words, he ran into the hall, the glove still clasped closely in his hand. She heard his rapid steps for a moment and then the closing of a door.

She said, “My God!” again and walking slowly to the bed, sat down upon it and dropped her head in her hands. She was suddenly tired, more tired than she had ever been in all her life. With the sound of the closing door, the strain under which she had been laboring, the strain which had given her strength, suddenly snapped. She felt exhausted in body and drained of emotions. Now she felt no sorrow or remorse, no fear or amazement. She was tired and her mind ticked away dully, mechanically, as the clock on the mantel.

Out of the dullness, one thought arose. Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt. It should hurt. She should be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate. She had relied upon his love for so long. It had upheld her through so many dark places. Yet, there the truth was. He did not love her and she did not care. She did not care because she did not love him. She did not love him and so nothing he could do or say could hurt her.

She lay down on the bed and put her head on the pillow tiredly. Useless to try to combat the idea, useless to say to herself: “But I do love him. I’ve loved him for years. Love can’t change to apathy in a minute.”

But it could change and it had changed.

“He never really existed at all, except in my imagination,” she thought wearily. “I loved something I made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn’t see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.”

Now she could look back down the long years and see herself in green flowered dimity, standing in the sunshine at Tara, thrilled by the young horseman with his blond hair shining like a silver helmet. She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers. And so he, too, would have become cheap if, in those first far-away days, she had ever had the satisfaction of refusing to marry him. If she had ever had him at her mercy, seen him grown passionate, importunate, jealous, sulky, pleading, like the other boys, the wild infatuation which had possessed her would have passed, blowing away as lightly as mist before sunshine and light wind when she met a new man.

“What a fool I’ve been,” she thought bitterly. “And now I’ve got to pay for it What I’ve wished for so often has happened. I’ve wished Melly was dead so I could have him. And now she’s dead and I’ve got him and I don’t want him. His damned honor will make him ask me if I want to divorce Rhett and marry him. Marry him? I wouldn’t have him on a silver platter! But, just the same I’ve got him round my neck for the rest of my life. As long as I live I’ll have to look after him and see that he doesn’t starve and that people don’t hurt his feelings. He’ll be just another child, clinging to my skirts. I’ve lost my lover and I’ve got another child. And if I hadn’t promised Melly, I’d—I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.”

CHAPTER LXII

SHE HEARD whispering voices outside, and going to the door she saw the frightened negroes standing in the back hall, Dilcey with her arms sagging under the heavy weight of the sleeping Beau, Uncle Peter crying, and Cookie wiping her wide wet face on her apron. All three looked at her, dumbly asking what they were to do now. She looked up the hall toward the sitting room and saw India and Aunt Pitty standing speechless, holding each other’s hands and, for once, India had lost her stiff-necked look. Like the negroes, they looked imploringly at her, expecting her to give instructions. She walked into the sitting room and the two women closed about her.

Oh, Scarlett, what—” began Aunt Pitty, her fat, child’s mouth shaking.

“Don’t speak to me or I’ll scream,” said Scarlett. Overwrought nerves brought sharpness to her voice and her hands clenched at her sides. The thought of speaking of Melanie now, of making the inevitable arrangements that follow a death made her throat tighten. “I don’t want a word out of either of you.”