absorption to work mutually, when we were lost to ourselves and our surroundings in the depths of each other's eyes.
So potent was this spell which we had for each other that for whole evenings we were its willing prisoners, living as in a dream, neither of us coming out from the intoxication of each other's presence until long after separation. Often then we wrote to each other about it. If we were in a taxi, we would become so oblivious to the entire world we would both be amazed when we reached our destination.
I was so proud of Mr. Harding, too, for he never entered a room that all eyes were not turned in his direction. I used to think of Florence Harding, his wife, in this connection, for I knew well his fascination and could readily understand how she, or any other woman, might "run after him" as Marionites say she pursued Warren Harding before they were married, when she was Florence Kling DeWolfe, and years older than Warren Harding. I understood, for hadn't I followed him around when I was but a child back in our home town?
One time Mr. Harding visited Senator Weeks at his place in the White Mountains along with some of the "other fellows," as he called them, and came down to New York on his way to Washington after a season of "chopping wood." I met him at the Grand Central Station and we dined at the Belmont Hotel, downstairs in the grill. He had had a speaking engagement which he had filled enroute to New York, and had spoken in a tent, he said. It had been dark when he made his way in through the rear entrance of the tent and he had fallen over one of the cables supporting the tent and scratched his hand terribly. He used to tell me things like this with a sort of embarrassment, as though he were ashamed of admitting them, and the very manner of telling increased my sympathy a thousandfold.
