each of us sharing with the other a silent conversation, watching the open sky and the waves... To this voyage I trace the growth of our friendship into what may be called love... Perhaps it was one evening, as we walked on the sands of the beach at Formentor, in Majorca... But how is a woman to know?... How can she tell?

After eleven days we returned to 'Cannes,' and the world came back to meet us with its parties, its clamor, and its problems...

And one evening, after we had attended a dinner given by Herman and Katherine Rogers, the Prince took a velvet box from his pocket and placed it in my hand... It held an ornament of diamonds and emeralds...

The Prince had promised his mother and father to attend the launching of the ship the 'Queen Mary' on the river Clyde... We all went to Lake Como, where we spent a week, and from there we set out for Arona, in order to travel on to Paris... The Prince returned from Paris by airplane, accompanied by Jack Aird, while we stayed on in the City of Lights to do our shopping...

On the night of the twenty-sixth of September, 1934, I sailed with Aunt Bessie aboard the 'Manhattan' from the shore of Le Havre; she was on her way back to the United States, while I had decided to land at 'Southampton.'

And though the Prince had vanished from before my eyes, the merry wave of his hand kept returning to my mind, and I lived in a sea of sweet mystery, asking myself: Where am I going?... Shall I allow myself to slide down this dangerous slope?... Or is all this a summer's dream on the shores of the Mediterranean?...

It seems my aunt sensed what was passing through my mind, and this is what moved her to ask me, as we sat at luncheon: Wallis... don't you think the Prince is smitten with you?... And I knew her: she was not the sort who likes to thrust her nose into every matter, nor had she ever once tried to force an idea upon me; and I knew at that moment that her question came of her concern for me and nothing else... I asked her in turn what had prompted her to this declaration... She laughed and answered: An old woman's eye does not miss what plays in the glances of a young man like him.

I answered only with a shiver that ran through my limbs; in truth I did not know what to do, or what to say?! Was the Prince enamored of me?... Or was he taken with the delights of that voyage, and the dreaming air in which we had lived, far from his world and from mine?... And I found myself answering Aunt Bessie with perfect composure: It pleases me to be the object of the Prince's admiration!

She measured me with her gaze, then went on to say: But do you not feel that this is casting you into dangerous pitfalls?... If you allow yourself to enjoy this kind of living, nothing of your present or your past will ever content you again. I was frank, and answered her in the same tone, giving her to understand that she did not know what she was talking about, and that all her worries were nothing to me so long as I was enjoying my life and knew where I was going...

My words only made her cling the more stubbornly to her idea, and to her warnings of the grave consequences of recklessness, and on this subject we ended our luncheon... I remained floundering in a world of doubt and questioning... My instinct told me that what had passed in the preceding weeks was no more than a mirage... while another force rose up in my head, opposing and contending against this thought, and pointing another way...

And I turned back to ask myself the reason for this Prince's attachment to me... I was no beauty, and he could gather the pick of the world's lovely women about him... Nor was I a young girl; in my country, women of my age are counted matrons whose day is done... And I thought that the one thing that

Our voyage together was a dream come true