respect that surrounded us and the extraordinary attention lavished upon us by the ship's captain and his officers, that everyone took us for official envoys sent by the King to America.. and here I cannot deny my joy and delight at that imaginary piece of news.

We stayed two months in America, during which I recov-ered many of the friendships I had almost lost through distance; and in mid-May we arrived in London... and the old life returned, with many visits to the Fort.

My birthday falls on June 19, and that year Thelma and the Prince prepared a great surprise for me: they gave a dinner in my honor at the famous restaurant "Quaglino's," near "Jermyn" Street, and the Prince presented me with a pot in which an "orchid" plant was set, assuring me it would bud the following year if I kept tending it faithfully.. Of course I kept the injunction, and the Prince had by now become an habitual visitor, dropping in on us without warning; and the plant surprised us with its magnificent blossoms at the very time we had expected, and I began to feel it was the symbol of something I had never noticed at all... For I was think-ing, with Ernest, how we might repay the Prince this kindness and generosity; and the Fourth of July drew near, the day the Americans residing in London celebrate, and we thought of giving a party in the Prince's honor. I wrote the invitation in

my own hand, and of course he accepted it without hesitation.

I had begun to know some of the foods the Prince likes — he prefers simple dishes — and I made the dinner in the American style. The Prince sat at the head of the table and Ernest at the other end, and so everything went smoothly, and the Prince showed great pleasure in the dinner.

Not long afterward I made a tour with Ernest to Ireland and Norway, and we returned to London at the end of September... We had scarcely arrived when we received an invi-tation from the Prince to spend the weekend at the Fort; he had been away during the summer, at Biarritz. And I had understood, at the time, that what drew him to us was Ernest's intelligence and his breadth of knowledge; as for me, I was no more than one member among the many who made up Thelma's friends.. whom she chose to invite to the Fort whenever she pleased.

The Prince was still a mysterious legend to me, surrounded by a thick halo which he guarded closely, fearing lest anyone come near it.

I saw Thelma often, and we would lunch together, but a mysterious veil remained between us; our relation was no more than a surface friendship. One day she invited me to a cocktail party on the occasion of her departure for America, and at the end of the party she whispered in my ear that I should look after the Prince during her absence, since he would be lonely — though

I had my doubts about the Prince's loneliness... or his need of a companion.

A few days later I was startled by my maid running into my room, saying that the Prince of Wales wished to speak to me on the telephone... It was the first time he had telephoned me himself, and he invited me with Ernest to a dinner he was giving at the "Dorchester" in honor of two American friends, Fred and Jibby Bate... I still remember that dinner for a particular reason: the Prince lifted a corner of the mask from his inner self, and while the guests went off to dance, he began to speak to me of his kingdom, his far-flung duties, the dispersion of self he felt, and then the importance of the role the Empire plays in this age... It was wonderful, and it let me look upon a deep loneliness and a spir-itual isolation that no one knew of in him. Again he apologized for troubling me with talk that did not concern me, but I begged him to go on speaking of himself, and I listened to him with my whole being.. And while he was study-ing me with a searching look, wondering how far my sincerity went, the music stopped, the guests gathered round the tables, and he said: "Wallis, you are the