“She wouldn’t let Mist’ Gerald come in hyah, nor Rosa nor Teena, nobody but me, kase Ah done had de typhoy. An’ den it tuck her, Miss Scarlett, an’ Ah seed right off dat twarnt no use.”
　Mammy straightened up and, raising her apron, dried her streaming eyes.
　“She went fas’, Miss Scarlett, an’ even dat nice Yankee doctah couldn’ do nuthin’ fer her. She din’ know nuthin’ a-tall. Ah call ter her an’ talk ter her but she din’ even know her own Mammy.”
　“Did she—did she ever mention me—call for me?”
　“No, honey. She think she is lil gal back in Savannah, She din’ call nobody by name.”
　Dilcey stirred and laid the sleeping baby across her knees.
　“Yes’m, she did. She did call somebody.”
　“You hesh yo’ mouf, you Injun-nigger!” Mammy turned with threatening violence on Dilcey.
　“Hush, Mammy! Who did she call, Dilcey? Pa?”
　“No’m. Not yo’ pa. It wuz the night the cotton buhnt—”
　“Has the cotton gone—tell me quickly!”
　“Yes’m, it buhnt up. The sojers rolls it out of the shed into the back yard and hollers, ‘Here the bigges’ bonfiah in Georgia,’ and tech it off.”
　Three years of stored cotton—one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all in one blaze!
　“And the fiah light up the place lak it wuz day—we wuz scared the house would buhn, too, and it wuz so bright in this hyah room that you could mos’ pick a needle offen the flo’. And w’en the light shine in the winder, it look lak it wake Miss Ellen up and she set right up in bed and cry out loud, time and again: “Feeleep! Feeleep!’ I ain’ never heerd no sech name but it wuz a name and she wuz callin’ him.”
　Mammy stood as though turned to stone glaring at Dilcey but Scarlett dropped her head into her hands. Philippe—who was he and what had he been to Mother that she died calling him?
　
　The long road from Atlanta to Tara had ended, ended in a blank wall, the road that was to end in Ellen’s arms. Never again could Scarlett lie down, as a child, secure beneath her father’s roof with the protection of her mother’s love wrapped about her like an eiderdown quilt. There was no security or haven to which she could turn now. No turning or twisting would avoid this dead end to which she had come. There was no one on whose shoulders she could rest her burdens. Her father was old and stunned, her sisters ill, Melanie frail and weak, the children helpless, and the negroes looking up. to her with childlike faith, clinging to her skirts, knowing that Ellen’s daughter would be the refuge Ellen had always been.
　Through the window, in the faint light of the rising moon, Tara stretched before her, negroes gone, acres desolate, barns ruined, like a body bleeding under her eyes, like her own body, slowly bleeding. This was the end of the road, quivering old age, sickness, hungry mouths, helpless hands plucking at her skirts. And at the end of this road, there was nothing—nothing but Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton, nineteen years old, a widow with a little child.