donor of all things beyond reasonable possibility of my own acquirement.
And so this particular visit ended with Mr. Ferguson, of the secret service, taking me through the White House reception rooms, the private dining-room, and many others which I was told were usually barred from public view. We made our exit by the entrance which is on the left of the portico as one enters the White House.
I was growingly introspective those days and especially after a trip to the White House. I would ponder morbidly a future, four years of which (Mr. Harding's presidential years) seemed unalterably mapped out beyond hope of change, wherein I seemed to be shut out from the happiness I so longed to share with the two people I loved more than all else. I was selfish to the point of forgetting that the man down in Washington whom I loved and who loved me, as he kept writing me, "more than the world," was also bearing a burden of loneliness such as he never dreamed would be his lot. So far he had not complained to me, though I felt the presence of much unrest and unhappiness even as early as the visits I made to him that fall. His was an attitude of constant hopefulness; mine of constant regret for the conditions of our entire situation.
Already I could not measure the regret I was experiencing as a result of the steps I had permitted to be taken in order to protect Elizabeth Ann "legally," that she might have a name and home. After all, would I not have to undo all this when I revealed to her her real identity, which I certainly expected to do? What, then, would be the good of having provided her with a protection which was utterly false fundamentally, notwithstanding the fact that I could not doubt the kindly intentions of my sister and her husband? Where was the justice of a law which would deprive a mother, worthy to be a mother, of her child
