# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 90

I think the sensations experienced when one leaves the shores of America for the first time are indescribable. I stood alone at the railing and looked back at the skyline of New York, gradually becoming hazy with lengthening distance. Soon the Statue of Liberty was shrouded in mist. Miss Anderson had gone downstairs for her luncheon. To leave New York was, for her, an old story. I still had in my arms some American Beauties I had received from the Northwestern University instructor, as well as gorgeous flowers from Captain Neilsen. In my hand I held my packet of letters, and next to my heart was my farewell note from my beloved. I took my flowers into our cabin, and went back to the rail to read my letters. Even as I drew out Mr. Harding's letter and gazed fondly at the familiar handwriting, I felt a shock. I could not account for it, but it was the same uncanny feeling I had experienced upon my last visit to him, which had been the January before—six long months ago. Mr. Harding's own preparations for his Alaska trip had made it inexpedient for me to stop in Washington, and we had in our letters spoken of the grand reunion we would have in the fall when we both returned from our respective journeyings.
"Nan, darling," Mr. Harding wrote, "how I wish I might be going with you! To think of spending the days in glorious idleness with you, lolling in comfy deck chairs, holding you all through the nights in my arms, seeing strange lands with you, Nan!" Then, more fatherly, he wrote, "Try to save out enough money so that you will not be entirely broke when you land back in New York, because it may be difficult for me to see you immediately upon your return." His farewell letter had contained no money. It was just full of love. "Darling Nan, I'd love to go to the end of the world with you," he wrote, and the old oft-written message, "I love you more than all the world," was repeated in ​that letter. The postscript was sweet, and fairly long, and for me alone. I could not, however, help feeling an inexplicable tone of finality, of foreboding, unconsciously expressed by him. Was it all over? How could I know?—then!
In September of 1923, about a month after Mr. Harding's death, when I went to Marion, Miss Daisy Harding told me that Carrie Harding Votaw had passed through her brother's office in the White House shortly before the Harding party started for Alaska, and Mr. Harding had called out to her, "Carrie, I'm making my will!" "Your will, Warren! Why, what for?" asked Mrs. Votaw in amazement. "Oh, I don't expect to come back from Alaska," Mr. Harding replied in a semi-offhand manner. I have often considered the last letter which he sent me when I sailed, in connection with that statement my sweetheart made to his sister about his will.
I kept Mr. Harding's farewell letter several days, loath to part with the latest and only love-letter I then possessed from him. But, finally, one evening, just before dark, when the deck was almost deserted and the passengers in their cabins dressing for dinner, I took my letter to the railing. I read it over slowly, then kissed it and tore it into bits. I tossed the bits out upon the billowing waves and watched the little white floating pieces as our boat sped along. I foolishly thought to myself, "They may be here when I come back and I shall pass them again." It reminded me of the summer of 1919, when I was in Asbury Park awaiting my baby's coming and used to take Mr. Harding's precious love-letters over to Spring Lake, a resort town near Asbury, to a favorite grove where I spent many an afternoon. There, after reading and re-reading the latest letter from Mr. Harding, I destroyed it, scattering the tiny bits all through the grove. To know that his letters were strewn all through that wood made it a very sacred place to me. I would sit down and write him from there, and sometimes I would stoop to pick up a wee scrap of the letter destroyed perhaps the previous day, and find written there parts of the word "darling" or "bliss" or "ultimate," and often they would recall his entire sentence of endearment to me. Now, ​as I dropped this last letter into the sea, I thought that hereafter the sea, like the grove, would always seem sacred to me, would seem almost to belong to me—even as he did belong to me!