this place? An American girl of her class might rise to fame with like beauty and equal talent. But, it seemed to me, I could see this pretty creature growing old and fat like her mother, with nothing save a drab fate awaiting her. One of the young men in our Armstrong party who also dined at Mme. Daillant's pension had pleaded with me to stay close by when Mlle. Daillant was in the vicinity for, he said, she attached herself to him with leechlike persistency, and he knew how these French people tried to rope one in. Poor girl! No doubt my American friend provided for her the most romance she had ever known.
I opened the paper. My heart stopped; then pounded. My head swam and I went limp. "Harding Has Pneumonia, but Worst Fears Allayed." I read the headlines over and over—over and over again. As the words gradually sunk meaningfully into my consciousness an indescribable terror seized me. I crushed the paper in my hands and let myself out the little gate into the wider, freer space beyond the garden. My lips were dry; I put my hand to my forehead to steady myself. I wondered why I did not faint. I never fainted, no matter how badly I felt. I have never to this day fainted. So I did not faint then. I only paced up and down, experiencing a mental anguish I had hitherto never known. A thousand suggestions of action came to me. They tumbled about in my poor brain in utter confusion, but from among them I was able to choose the first to be acted upon: I would rush back to Paris immediately, and thence to America by the first boat . . . . No, that would not do . . . . I must "act natural" before these people and get out of the city without arousing any suspicions. "Now is the time to summon all your courage, Nan," Mr. Harding had said to me over the telephone when I pleaded with him to see me in New York shortly after the baby's birth. I seemed to hear him say it now. I tried to shake myself into common sense; to tell myself everything was all right; he was ill but he would recover!
I seemed to go over, during those brief moments, my years with Mr. Harding—our whole love-life together, even up to the time I had seen him last, suffering from a terrible cold and look-
