cried, "you would be my wife, wouldn't you? You would marry me, Nan? Oh, dearie, dearie," brokenly, "if I only could . . . if we could only have our child—together!" This last came as a hushed exclamation, almost a prayer, scarcely audible. The yearning of a heart laid bare! I nodded wordlessly. The very air seemed sacred.
When he spoke again it was as if he had returned to stern realities, and the return brought partial emotional relaxation. He smiled at me sadly. "Would be grand, wouldn't it, dearie?" I could not yet safely answer but I nodded. He repeated it and looked out the window at his left. The voice grew stern again; he did not smile now; only just turned and looked at me hard as a man might who is trying not to cry. . . .
To marry Warren Harding! To live on a farm and raise children with Warren Gamaliel Harding! What rapture! I put my lips against his and spoke through my kisses. "Oh, sweetheart, that would be too heavenly!" He whispered back, "You tell me about it, dearie!" And so I in turn pictured for him just what it would mean to be his wife, to live with him before the world, to raise "the young lieutenant" and perhaps other children, to love him, to wait upon him, to worship him forever and ever as the true bride of his heart! And the light of a love divine was in his eyes as I spoke. "And the young lieutenant must be the image of his dad, remember!" I ended brightly. "The young lieutenant" we had always called our coming baby, and strangely enough this fitted in with the story we afterwards concocted in explanation of our very difficult situation. "Won't it be g-r-a-n-d to have a son?" I asked him now. He nodded smilingly. But months later, as I roused up out of the influence of chloroform to inquire of the doctor, "Is it a girl or boy?" and he answered briefly, "girl," I decided immediately that I had wanted a girl all along!
"Grand" was a word Mr. Harding used to say, which seemed to him to express the different raptures he experienced in being with me. He used to drag the word out just as one might hold a morsel of ambrosially delicious food in his mouth
