I had promised Mr. Harding that I would write to him. Indeed, he did not have to ask me, for I knew I would want to anyway. Letters were a medium of expression of my love for him which I could not lightly abandon. But I could not, obviously, mail any of them. I kept them in my trunk, adding a little each night to what I knew, from experience, he would term a veritable feast when I gave them to him in the fall. Little wonder, staying so close to him in this way, and being unable to banish fears about him, that I was torn mentally in what had been my serious resolve to forget!
The Italian was very attentive and, I discovered, was highly intelligent. How would it be, I thought, if I married him instead of an American, and made him the convenience-father of my child? He spoke often of coming to America, where he might very likely settle permanently. He was manifestly fond of children. And he was a gentleman. It was a thought, anyway.
In Dijon, Madame Daillant's little garden behind the house provided a gathering place for her boarder-guests as they dropped in for meals, but the evening of August 1st, 1923, it was conspicuously deserted. I found it so when I, going on ahead of Helen Anderson, entered; so I threw myself down into one of the empty chairs and picked up a newspaper. It was very warm and I fanned myself with the paper before opening it. A curious country this, I thought, looking around at the graveled walks, the rickety benches, and the walls surmounted by overturned glass jars on sticks. In parts of the country where I had been it was very beautiful, and it had proven rather diverting. But oh, where could one find a country to equal our own United States! How really shabbily the middle classes here lived! The daughter of Mme. Daillant, a pretty girl, with abundant dark hair and creamy skin, and cheeks pinked by nature to an enviable glow, a pianist, too, of marked ability—what prospects had she in
