It was in fact during that very visit to Marion that I had gone over to the Dr. Harding home on East Center Street one afternoon to join Mrs. Votaw, and be there so Mrs. Mouser could pick us both up and take us for a drive. Passing through the house out to the garden I had come across Dr. Harding, lying down on the couch in the living-room. I had not seen him before on that particular visit, and I went over and leaned down and kissed him on the cheek and spoke to him. His eyes were closed but I knew he was not asleep. He opened them and recognized me immediately. I doubt very much whether I have ever encountered Dr. Harding even in passing greeting that he did not remark in the same exclamatory fashion, "Oh, yes,—Nan, Nan! Yes, I remember how your father used to tell me how you stood up for Warren! He said you thought Warren was the finest man in the country—yes, your father used to say . . ." And I have known Daisy Harding to interrupt more than once and say, "Yes, dad, you've told Nan that before," or, "Yes, dad, Nan knows." And when I bent and touched his cheek with my lips and took his dear old wrinkled hand in mine, he spoke to me immediately of his son Warren. But now the voice was the far-away voice of a grief-stricken aged man, and so pitifully weak that I bent over him and listened intently to catch the words. Bless him! He was trying to recall to me my father's words to him about my love for his son. But the feeble voice trailed off and I felt more than heard his whispered heart-cry, "Too bad Warren had to die!" My heart was so full of love and sympathy for him whose son I worshipped that something which must have been the maternal in me longed to stoop and take the snow-white head on my arm and mingle my tears with his against the wrinkled cheek. But, instead, I stood looking down upon him and seeing in the deep-set faded eyes of the father the eyes of the other, the younger man, his son and my beloved.
I have yet to see, however, except in the eyes of my baby, who is the soul of Warren Harding, the spiritual lights of understanding, gladness, and sorrow that shone from the eyes of him whose gaze was ever fixed beyond the pale of the material. I
