It better." But the charm had lost its potency. She had to think

of two things, now--Melanie and how much she loved and needed her;

Ashley and the obstinate blindness that had made her refuse to see

him as he really was. And she knew that thoughts of them would

hurt just as much tomorrow and all the tomorrows of her life.

"I can't go back in there and talk to them now," she thought. "I

can't face Ashley tonight and comfort him. Not tonight! Tomorrow

morning I'll come early and do the things I must do, say the

comforting things I must say. But not tonight. I can't. I'm

going home."

Home was only five blocks away. She would not wait for the sobbing

Peter to harness the buggy, would not wait for Dr. Meade to drive

her home. She could not endure the tears of the one, the silent

condemnation of the other. She went swiftly down the dark front

steps without her coat or bonnet and into the misty night. She

rounded the corner and started up the long hill toward Peachree

Street, walking in a still wet world, and even her footsteps were

as noiseless as a dream.

As she went up the hill, her chest tight with tears that would not

come, there crept over her an unreal feeling, a feeling that she

had been in this same dim chill place before, under a like set of

circumstances--not once but many times before. How silly, she

thought uneasily, quickening her steps. Her nerves were playing

her tricks. But the feeling persisted, stealthily pervading her

mind. She peered about her uncertainly and the feeling grew, eerie

but familiar, and her head went up sharply like an animal scenting

danger. It's just that I'm worn out, she tried to soothe herself.

And the night's so queer, so misty. I never saw such thick mist

before except--except!

And then she knew and fear squeezed her heart. She knew now. In a

hundred nightmares, she had fled through fog like this, through a

haunted country without landmarks, thick with cold cloaking mist,

peopled with clutching ghosts and shadows. Was she dreaming again

or was this her dream come true?

For an instant, reality went out of her and she was lost. The old

nightmare feeling was sweeping her, stronger than ever, and her

heart began to race. She was standing again amid death and

stillness, even as she had once stood at Tara. All that mattered

In the world had gone out of it, life was in ruins and panic howled

through her heart like a cold wind. The horror that was in the

mist and was the mist laid hands upon her. And she began to run.

As she had run a hundred times in dreams, she ran now, flying

blindly she knew not where, driven by a nameless dread, seeking in

the gray mist for the safety that lay somewhere.

Up the dim street she fled, her head down, her heart hammering, the

night air wet on her lips, the trees overhead menacing. Somewhere,

somewhere in this wild land of moist stillness, there was a refuge!

She sped gasping up the long hill, her wet skirts wrapping coldly

about her ankles, her lungs bursting, the tight-laced stays

pressing her ribs into her heart.

Then before her eyes there loomed a light, a row of lights, dim and

flickering but none the less real. In her nightmare, there had

never been any lights, only gray fog. Her mind seized on those

lights. Lights meant safety, people, reality. Suddenly she

stopped running, her hands clenching, struggling to pull herself

out of her panic, staring intently at the row of gas lamps which

had signaled to her brain that this was Peachtree Street, Atlanta,

and not the gray world of sleep and ghosts.

She sank down panting on a carriage block, clutching at her nerves

as though they were ropes slipping swiftly through her hands.

"I was running--running like a crazy person!" she thought, her body

shaking with lessening fear, her thudding heart making her sick.

"But where was I running?"

Her breath came more easily now and she sat with her hand pressed

to her side and looked up Peachtree Street. There, at the top of

the hill, was her own house. It looked as though every window bore

lights, lights defying the mist to dim their brilliance. Home! It

was real! She looked at the dim far-off bulk of the house

thankfully, longingly, and something like calm fell on her spirit.

Home! That was where she wanted to go. That was where she was

running. Home to Rhett!

At this realization it was as though chains fell away from her and

with them the fear which had haunted her dreams since the night she

stumbled to Tara to find the world ended. At the end of the road

to Tara she had found security gone, all strength, all wisdom, all

loving tenderness, all understanding gone--all those things which,

embodied in Ellen, had been the bulwark of her girlhood. And,

though she had won material safety since that night, in her dreams

she was still a frightened child, searching for the lost security

of that lost world.

Now she knew the haven she had sought in dreams, the place of warm

safety which had always been hidden from her in the mist. It was

not Ashley--oh, never Ashley! There was no more warmth in him than