headed, where we prepared food and amusements for the air forces. Before long David conceived the idea of founding a clinic for expectant mothers and children; and it pleases me to mention that the clinics we founded are still there to this hour.
With the year 1944 the last breaths of the war faded away, and David's task became an empty one; by this time he had become certain that his family preferred to keep him at a distance so long as it was able to.
I had expected as much, but I began to think of the sorrow that stirred within him, and the feeling of disappointment that came over him; and I thought of one last attempt to bring him and his mother, at least, closer together. The occasion came when the Bishop of Nassau, the Reverend "John Dauglish," decided to return to England. I knew of his close ties to David's father and to the family, and since he was a devoted friend of ours as well, I decided to send with him a letter to present to Queen Mary when he called on her... I still keep a copy of that letter, which read:
Madam: I beg you to forgive my intrusion upon your time, and my boldness in approaching Your Majesty... The reason is very simple. It has been a source of pain and regret to me to be the barrier that stands between a mother and her son, and I cannot believe that no moments pass in which you remember David. If you should wish to know how he fares, ask the Reverend Dauglish about him,
and about our life on this remote island, and all we have endured of suffering and privation... among them the war, and the separation from family and homeland, for which we wish every prosperity and progress.
And I beg to remain Your Majesty's obedient servant.
Wallis Windsor
A letter came to me from the Reverend telling me of his visit to the Queen, and of her questions about David; but when he told her of the work I had been doing on the island, she seemed like a rock of stone...
One day David came into the house beaming, to read me a letter from his mother which said at its close, "I have sent a kind message to your wife." He kept wondering in astonishment what had happened to his mother to change her mind; naturally I did not answer him, and he did not know until he read this chapter.
In 1945 David decided to hand in his resignation; and so it was.
We could not return to Paris until September of that year, owing to the difficulty of travel... It was our great good fortune to find our house just as we had left it; so we moved our furniture and went to the "Ritz"... The south of France was still under the rule of the American forces, and we did not obtain a permit to enter "La Croë" before December... I had always been looking for a dwelling on the outskirts of Paris, and at last we found the "Moulin de la Tuilerie," whose construction dates back to the seventeenth century. One of our
artist friends, "Étienne Drian," was living in it, and after some effort we succeeded in persuading him to sell the place, together with the gardens surrounding it...
When I watch David from the terrace, coming and going among the rose plantings, I know how right we were in choosing that place; but for a person raised to love service, and the helping of his country, it was hard to be content with this empty life. And so David went on shuttling between France and England, to remind the Palace of his existence whenever the need arose; but these visits of his met with no encouragement.
We carried on our life within this frame, which compelled me to learn new qualities and give up old habits... I still hold fast to Lord Byron's saying: love is a part of man's life, but it is the whole of woman's existence... For any woman who has loved as I have loved, and to whom a man has been devoted as the one who loved me, has known life with all that lies behind it... Nor must I forget to mention that I was never for a day a mother, and never knew that feeling of creation which mothers pass through... And yet I have lived more than one life, and have known the greatest happiness in existence...
(The End)
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