Intoxicating one, a gesture worth everything she might lose

thereby. But now, all that had changed overnight and there was

nothing she desired less. Why this should be she did not know.

There was too great a tumult of conflicting ideas in her mind for

her to sort them out. She only knew that as she had once desired

to keep her mother thinking her modest, kind, pure of heart, so she

now passionately desired to keep Melanie's high opinion. She only

knew that she did not care what the world thought of her or what

Ashley or Rhett thought of her, but Melanie must not think her

other than she had always thought her.

She dreaded to tell Melanie the truth but one of her rare honest

Instincts arose, an instinct that would not let her masquerade in

false colors before the woman who had fought her battles for her.

So she had hurried to Melanie that morning, as soon as Rhett and

Bonnie had left the house.

But at her first tumbled-out words: "Melly, I must explain about

the other day--" Melanie had imperiously stopped her. Scarlett

looking shamefaced into the dark eyes that were flashing with love

and anger, knew with a sinking heart that the peace and calm

following confession could never be hers. Melanie had forever cut

off that line of action by her first words. With one of the few

adult emotions Scarlett had ever had, she realized that to unburden

her own tortured heart would be the purest selfishness. She would

be ridding herself of her burden and laying it on the heart of an

Innocent and trusting person. She owed Melanie a debt for her

championship and that debt could only be paid with silence. What

cruel payment it would be to wreck Melanie's life with the

unwelcome knowledge that her husband was unfaithful to her, and her

beloved friend a party to it!

"I can't tell her," she thought miserably. "Never, not even if my

conscience kills me." She remembered irrelevantly Rhett's drunken

remark: "She can't conceive of dishonor in anyone she loves . . .

let that be your cross."

Yes, it would be her cross, until she died, to keep this torment

silent within her, to wear the hair shirt of shame, to feel it

chafing her at every tender look and gesture Melanie would make

throughout the years, to subdue forever the impulse to cry: "Don't

be so kind! Don't fight for me! I'm not worth it!"

"If you only weren't such a fool, such a sweet, trusting, simple-

minded fool, it wouldn't be so hard," she thought desperately.

"I've toted lots of weary loads but this is going to be the

heaviest and most galling load I've ever toted."

Melanie sat facing her, in a low chair, her feet firmly planted on

an ottoman so high that her knees stuck up like a child's, a

posture she would never have assumed had not rage possessed her to

the point of forgetting proprieties. She held a line of tatting in

her hands and she was driving the shining needle back and forth as

furiously as though handling a rapier in a duel.

Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she would have been

stamping both feet and roaring like Gerald in his finest days,

calling on God to witness the accursed duplicity and knavishness of

mankind and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation. But

only by the flashing needle and the delicate brows drawn down

toward her nose did Melanie indicate that she was inwardly

seething. Her voice was cool and her words were more close clipped

than usual. But the forceful words she uttered were foreign to

Melanie who seldom voiced an opinion at all and never an unkind

word. Scarlett realized suddenly that the Wilkeses and the

Hamiltons were capable of furies equal to and surpassing those of

the O'Haras.

"I've gotten mighty tired of hearing people criticize you,

darling," Melanie said, "and this is the last straw and I'm going

to do something about it. All this has happened because people are

jealous of you, because you are so smart and successful. You've

succeeded where lots of men, even, have failed. Now, don't be