teaching, and I thought it would be entirely safe. "All right, you're the boss!" he said playfully.
Mr. Harding was in knickers, and I told him for about the dozenth time how stunning he looked. He smiled and said he thought maybe getting out into the open air after luncheon would help him to get rid of his cold. I told him it would very likely do him much more good than Dr. Sawyer's prescriptions. "Oh, well," he replied, shrugging his shoulders, "he doesn't doctor me much, you know; Mrs. Harding has lots of faith in him. Gee, Nan," and he shook his head in the I-give-it-up-it's-too-much-for-me-to-solve way, "they bother me to death as it is, looking at my tongue and feeling my pulse; why, a fellow can't be alone a minute! Now, what I really need is your treatment!" and he finished with a big hug and kiss.
Mr. Harding said it was time for him to go to luncheon and time for me to go, anyway, and I, pouting as usual when I had to leave him, rose with reluctance. For some reason which I do not remember, I was to meet my secret service escort on the conservatory side of the White House instead of outside Mr. Harding's office. So Mr. Harding said I could walk over with him, down the passage known as the "secret passage," I believe, and under the pergola. We lingered long inside the closed door, however, before we left the executive office. Little would I have actually believed, in spite of the chills of premonition I had experienced during that visit, that never again would we stand thus together upon this earth. Perhaps that was why we clung so to each other in our farewell embrace. And Mr. Harding's eyes, as well as my own, were wet. I shall never forget how he looked down at me, in the dim light of that room, and asked, as he so often did, that I say to him that I was happy now. "Are you happy now, dearie?" he asked softly, and with quivering lips and brimming eyes I bravely lied, "I am happy, sweetheart!"
We went out. Several feet behind us as we passed through the pergola came Brooks, returning evidently from an errand to the offices. I asked Mr. Harding who he was and he told me. In my brief glance backward I saw that his valet was a very good-
