attentively, watching covertly this out-of-the-ordinary personality... He was soon captivated by me, and my fascination with him was no less; and Mary Raffray would often invite him to her table when she knew I was going to visit her, so we would meet in conversation over the meal or around the bridge table... As the days passed we grew ever closer to each other, and felt an ever greater harmony of inclinations and tastes. And I kept persuading myself not to become entangled in a romantic attachment before I had finished everything with Win...

I was at the threshold of thirty, and began thinking of finding some kind of work, but I did not have the intellectual capacity sufficient for that. It happened, as I was returning from New York, that aboard the boat there was a friend from Baltimore who began telling me about a fortune-teller who worked miracles; I was a realist and the idea did not appeal to me, but my friend assured me of the pleasure of the experience — listening for half an hour to talk of my future and my life... No sooner had my friend left me than I sent to summon the skillful fortune-teller, at ten dollars a sit-ting... The words she strung into my ears have faded away, all but a few. She predicted that I would yet marry twice in my life. One of the marriages would be ordinary, and would soon vanish from my mind; then another marriage, between the ages of forty and fifty, into which a mighty power would enter, and which would raise a tremendous stir... I asked her about that power, and she did

not answer, but she reassured me that I would become a famous woman... I asked her again whether that power would be the result of some work of my own, and she said no, adding: There is not a single occupation in the course of your life... You will live a simple life; you will marry, then divorce, and pass through difficult nervous states... And that power has to do with a man...

I did not believe her at the time, and I went back to my former life — my short outings, my many books, and my loneliness whistling in my ears like the whistling of the abyss... Ernest Simpson decided to divorce his wife within a short time; then he came offering me marriage, once the two of us were free; and when I looked into myself I found that I loved him for several qualities...

Meanwhile my mother had married Charles Gordon in Washington, and though she was fifty-six years old, she showed the gaiety of a young bride.

Then an unexpected letter came to me from Aunt Bessie, inviting me to accompany her to Europe... That was in midsummer 1927, when we left New York; and we spent a happy time, which my aunt enlivened with her gaiety, her vitality, and her indepen-dence... As we were planning our return I was startled by the news of Uncle Sol's death... I had become in his eyes the stray sheep, and he had not been in touch with me since my last visit to him... When I went back to attend the funeral, my soul was wrapped in a somber black sheet, like the closed future I could not

know; and it appeared that my uncle's will had not deprived me of some share of his inheritance... Then, at the end of the summer, I obtained the divorce paper from Win. Ernest Simpson had gone to England to head his family's business there, and from there he wrote asking me again to marry him; and my answer this time was yes, without any hesitation. I sent it from the Côte d'Azur in France, where Katherine Rogers and her husband had invited me to spend the winter season...

In May 1928 I traveled to London, where Ernest had pre-pared everything for the marriage — the car, the chauffeur, and the villa — and on July 21 of that year we were married. My wedding dress was yellow, with a blue coat over it, both brought to me by a famous dressmaker in Paris... We held no celebration for our wedding; even the people who witnessed it could be counted on the fingers of one hand... But the happy honeymoon we spent in France made us forget all that, and with Ernest I felt a security and a stability I had not known since my childhood...

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