He was shaking, as though he stood in a strong wind, and his lips, traveling from her mouth downward to where the wrapper had fallen from her body, fell on her soft flesh.
He was muttering things she did not hear, his lips were evoking feelings never felt before.
She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her.
She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again.
Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.
For the first time in her life she had met someone, something stronger than she, someone she could neither bully nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking her.
Somehow, her arms were around his neck and her lips trembling beneath his and they were going up, up into the darkness again, a darkness that was soft and swirling and all enveloping.
When she awoke the next morning, he was gone and had it not been for the rumpled pillow beside her, she would have thought the happenings of the night before a wild preposterous dream.
She went crimson at the memory and, pulling the bed covers up about her neck, lay bathed in sunlight, trying to sort out the jumbled impressions in her mind.
Two things stood to the fore.
She had lived for years with Rhett, slept with him, eaten with him, quarreled with him and borne his child--and yet, she did not know him.
The man who had carried her up the dark stairs was a stranger of whose existence she had not dreamed.
And now, though she tried to make herself hate him, tried to be indignant, she could not.
He had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through a wild mad night and she had gloried in it.
Oh, she should be ashamed, should shrink from the very memory of the hot swirling darkness!
A lady, a real lady, could never hold up her head after such a night.
But, stronger than shame, was the memory of rapture, of the ecstasy of surrender.
For the first time in her life she had felt alive, felt passion as sweeping and primitive as the fear she had known the night she fled Atlanta, as dizzy sweet as the cold hate when she had shot the Yankee.
Rhett loved her!
At least, he said he loved her and how could she doubt it now?
How odd and bewildering and how incredible that he loved her, this savage stranger with whom she had lived in such coolness.
She was not altogether certain how she felt about this revelation but as an idea came to her she suddenly laughed aloud.
He loved her and so she had him at last.
She had almost forgotten her early desire to entrap him into loving her, so she could hold the whip over his insolent black head.
Now, it came back and it gave her great satisfaction.
For one night, he had had her at his mercy but now she knew the weakness of his armor.
From now on she had him where she wanted him.
She had smarted under his jeers for a long time, but now she had him where she could make him jump through any hoops she cared to hold.
When she thought of meeting him again, face to face in the sober light of day, a nervous tingling embarrassment that carried with it an exciting pleasure enveloped her.
"I'm nervous as a bride," she thought.
"And about Rhett!"
And, at the idea she fell to giggling foolishly.
But Rhett did not appear for dinner, nor was he at his place at the supper table.
The night passed, a long night during which she lay awake until dawn, her ears strained to hear his key in the latch.
But he did not come.
When the second day passed with no word from him, she was frantic with disappointment and fear.
She went by the bank but he was not there.
She went to the store and was very sharp with everyone, for every time the door opened to admit a customer she looked up with a flutter, hoping it was Rhett.
She went to the lumber yard and bullied Hugh until he hid himself behind a pile of lumber.
But Rhett did not seek her there.
She could not humble herself to ask friends if they had seen him.
She could not make inquiries among the servants for news of him.
But she felt they knew something she did not know.
Negroes always knew everything.
Mammy was unusually silent those two days.
She watched Scarlett out of the corner of her eye and said nothing.
When the second night had passed Scarlett made up her mind to go to the police.
Perhaps he had had an accident, perhaps his horse had thrown him and he was lying helpless in some ditch.
Perhaps--oh, horrible thought--perhaps he was dead.
The next morning when she had finished her breakfast and was in her room putting on her bonnet, she heard swift feet on the stairs.