his streaming shoulder and he smiled up

India shot one more quick anguished look at Ashley, and, wrapping her cape about her, ran lightly down the hall to the back door and let herself out quietly into the night. 　Scarlett, straining her eyes past Rhett, felt her heart beat again as she saw Ashley’s eyes open. Melanie snatched a folded towel from the washstand rack and pressed it against his streaming shoulder and he smiled up weakly, reassuringly into her face. Scarlett felt Rhett’s hard penetrating eyes upon her, knew that her heart was plain upon her face, but she did not care. Ashley was bleeding, perhaps dying and she who loved him had torn that hole through his shoulder. She wanted to run to the bed, sink down beside it and clasp him to her but her knees trembled so that she could not enter the room. Hand at her mouth, she stared while Melanie packed a fresh towel against his shoulder, pressing it hard as though she could force back the blood into his body. But the towel reddened as though by magic. 　How could a man bleed so much and still live? But, thank God, there was no bubble of blood at his lips—oh, those frothy red bubbles, forerunners of death that she knew so well from the dreadful day of the battle at Peachtree Creek when the wounded had died on Aunt Pitty’s lawn with bloody mouths. 　“Brace up,” said Rhett, and there was a hard, faintly jeering note in his voice. “He won’t die. Now, go take the lamp and hold it for Mrs. Wilkes. I need Archie to run errands.” 　Archie looked across the lamp at Rhett. 　“I ain’t takin’ no orders from you,” he said briefly, shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek. 　“You do what he says,” said Melanie sternly, “and do it quickly. Do everything Captain Butler says. Scarlett, take the lamp.”