brother, my love of Warren Harding, which began when I was scarcely thirteen, my father's death when I was about sixteen, my subsequent schooling at the expense of my father's college classmates, my first meeting with Mr. Harding in New York following my request to him for a position, and, gradually, our further meetings which led to ultimate intimacies prompted by mutual love.
After I had got into the meetings with Mr. Harding which were all-night trysts, Dr. Harding interrupted me many times to ask, "When was that?" or "Where did that meeting take place?" and I supplied from memory the approximate time and place. All of this information he jotted down in his little notebook. It was as difficult for me to recall aloud for the doctor the many occasions of our sweet visits together as it had been to recite the whole story to his sister, Daisy Harding, but the knowledge that I was doing it for Elizabeth Ann gave me the needed courage to go on.
I had not dreamed that Dr. Harding intended to catechize me as a judge might a witness, and I wondered if by so doing he had thought to frighten me into confusion. But this was an unworthy thought. The seriousness of the situation probably justified in his eyes the use of pencil and pad and direct questions. Dr. Harding is rather a small man, and somehow, seeing him sitting there on the edge of the chair, plying me with questions as to "when?" and "where?" aroused my pity. If his brother Warren were only there! He would say, as he did once before, "Let this poor little girl go—I'll answer your questions."
I could not help associating Mr. Harding's remark about his brother with his brother's very attitude toward me now. "Brother Deac is the only man I know who never slept with a woman prior to his marriage," Mr. Harding had said to me. And as I looked at him now while I poured out my story again through tears and exclamations of love for him I worshipped, it occurred to me that indeed it might be difficult for such a frail looking individual to understandingly sympathize with a situation of this
