# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 101

By one-thirty that afternoon I had finished my purchasings, having found at the last minute some gaily colored handkerchiefs which I felt I would buy right then for gifts when I returned to America. My money was low. I had wired Captain Neilsen once for $200, which he had sent almost immediately to me by cable, having cabled him in Paris of my anticipated need. This fund was fast diminishing. I would have to cable him for more. I was glad I felt free to do so, because it was impossible for me to cable Mr. Harding or for him to cable money to me. On my way home I stopped at the patisserie for some ice cream. These afternoons in southern France were very warm. Some of the girls who were in our Armstrong Tour were there and I sat down with them. We talked about the party that night and our school work.
"Oh, by the way," one of the girls remarked casually, "did you ​know that President Harding was dead?" Like a knell, afar off, I heard a clock strike two.
I never saw that girl afterwards, so I do not know what she and the others thought of my conduct. I felt momentarily that I should faint. "Where did you read that?" I demanded. (To myself I was saying, "God! These varying reports will kill me! Why do they print such things!") "On the bulletin board in the Square," she answered.
I gave the waitress some change, picked up my parcels with trembling hands and rushed out into the street. I made immediately for the bulletin board. It was several blocks away. I was suddenly so tired I thought I could not possibly walk so far. The sun was very warm. My heart pounded and my cheeks felt strangely hot. And I kept trying to wet my dry lips with an equally dry tongue. Aloud I was saying to myself as I ran along, "Oh, that could not be, that could not be; of course it is a mistake; oh, God, that just could not be!"
Two university boys tried to stop me as I ran, calling after me something about the dance as I shook my head and ran on. I did not stop until I reached the bulletin board. I was tense and faint when I got there and was clutching my little packages in hands that shook. The glare of the sun was in my face as I stared up at the bulletin board and tried to decipher in French much too difficult for me the news about President Harding. A good many people stood about, also reading. I turned to ask one of them, but remembered that they could only tell me in French what the bulletin board said, and I could as well make it out myself. I steeled myself and laboriously translated the bulletin. The word mort I knew, of course, meant death. Oh, God! Yes, that was it. I translated words meaning eighteen hours. Yes, that was it. He had been gone now for eighteen hours! Eighteen hours dead! "How does it read, really?" I asked in a strained voice of a man beside me. But he only shook his head. "Je ne comphrend pas," he said.
Oh, it is difficult for me to bring this picture back to my mind! I can remember it as plainly as though it were yesterday, and all ​the horrible sensations of the shocks I experienced come over me anew. The world seemed without bottom. Things suddenly lost their meaning. The world, people, life itself, were like a horrible nightmare. I felt, like the coffin, as though I were balanced in mid-air. I could not ground either myself or my thoughts.