congruous coming from the lips of Warren Harding. But this bit of gossip interested me far less than his hushed exclamation across the table, "Gee, Nan, you'd make a lovely bride!" Once in a while, as on this occasion, I answered him, "Would I, darling Warren?" I called him Warren very rarely. He used to tease me to say to him, "Warren, darling, I love you," and it seemed to delight him to hear me say his name. But I was so much younger than he—exactly thirty years his junior—that somehow it seemed out of tune for me to address him by his first name. I just resorted to endearments, usually calling him "sweetheart." He called me "Nan" from the first and his letters usually began, "Nan darling." I remember the salutation very often seemed as though it might have been put in after the body of the letter had been written, and when I asked him about it he said that was the case, for he so often wrote his letters to me on memo paper during legislative discussions in the Senate Chamber.
The first part of January, 1919, I went over to Washington. I think I stopped at the Raleigh Hotel. Mr. Harding sometimes found it difficult to be with me all of the afternoon and of course I understood this. He himself would in that case plan my afternoon for me, sending me on a bus trip to Arlington Heights, or suggesting some other form of entertainment. That particular afternoon and evening, however, he did spend with me up until ten-thirty or eleven o'clock. We went over to the Senate Office in the evening. We stayed quite a while there that evening, longer, he said, than was wise for us to do, because the rules governing guests in the Senate Offices were rather strict. It was here, we both decided afterward, that our baby girl was conceived. Mr. Harding told me he liked to have me be with him in his office, for then the place held precious memories and he could visualize me there during the hours he worked alone. Mr. Harding was more or less careless of consequences, feeling sure he was not now going to become a father. "No such luck!" he said. But he was mis-
