bility of a continued sharing of sweet intimacies with her father? And where, oh, where, lay my own peace of mind? Certainly no good result could come from my constant mental pandemonium!
My sweetheart, in the very nature of his position, had sacrificed what would have been to him and me the culminating happy years of our love, by the political victory which would doubtless eventuate in claiming four or eight years of his life. Could our present personal regime survive over a period of eight years? It could not, I decided, if I were to keep my right mind and continue ever-alert vigilance in Mr. Harding's behalf. No human being, I argued to myself in despair, could withstand the devastating mental effects of a problem so seemingly unsolvable, so shattering from the very method in which a solution had been effected. A cowardly, covering adoption of the daughter of the President of the United States!
And so on and on . . . and the days passed, and months were behind me, and still my mind continued to go round and round, evolving no workable plan, however, and I continued to support to the best of my ability the regime as it stood.
But I never for one moment ceased searching for a plan, and I wonder now as I write just when the plan which I decided definitely to follow after Mr. Harding's death, really took form in my mind. It may even as early as that summer—1922—have been latent within my consciousness, and my subconscious thinking might very possibly have directed a course of action which would have received vigorous opposition from my conscious thought.
I began to perceive the easy way out was to find myself a husband. It would be comparatively easy then to take Elizabeth Ann, give her my married name, and, having her thus legalized as mine, confess to the man that I would never love him except
