Melly knew how it would be--Melly knew him far better than I do. That's why she said look after him and Beau, in the same breath. How can Ashley ever stand this? I can stand it. I can stand anything. I've had to stand so much. But he can't--he can't stand anything without her."
"Forgive me, darling," she said gently, putting out her arms. "I know what you must be suffering. But remember, she doesn't know anything--she never even suspected--God was that good to us."
He came to her quickly and his arms went round her blindly. She tiptoed to bring her
warm cheek comfortingly against his and with one hand she smoothed the back of his hair.
"Don't cry, sweet. She'd want you to be brave. She'll want to see you in a moment and you must be brave. She mustn't see that you've been crying. It would worry her."
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.