Mr. Harding's attitude about my taking on any possible confidantes was a very decided one. From the first he begged me to keep our secret and tell it to no one. It seemed to me that he most of all warned me against my mother's knowing. It has many times occurred to me that this solicitude on his part came from his keener wisdom about mothers in general as well as, in my particular case, his knowledge of my mother's conventionality.
It was during our first sweetheart days, although it seems to me it was before my complete surrender to Mr. Harding, that I visited in Marion, and, with the longing to talk with someone I really loved and respected besides my beloved Mr. Harding, I put my case hypothetically to his sister "Daisy." She recalled that I had done this when I first talked with her about the whole matter in June of 1925, and she also recalled her answer which I had in the meantime, immediately after my visit with her, repeated to her brother Warren. She had said, when I asked her what she would do if she were in love with a man whom she could not marry, but who might want her to belong to him anyway, "Don't do it, Nan; the world is against you; no matter how much you love each other, don't!" I had repeated this to Mr. Harding. I remember he said, as he has often said about Daisy, "Dais' is a good girl, Nan, but, dearie, anyone would tell you that! Anyone would advise you against it who didn't know how much I love you!" This intimation of his loving protection strengthened my decision that ours was an exceptional case.
And he did love me too! With the first forty-page love-letter of which I have spoken and which came to me at the Colonial Hotel in Chicago in June of 1917, came also from Washington a snapshot which I have preserved, though the corners are frayed from much kissing and handling. I wrote him that I
