# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 102

I turned away from the bulletin board and walked blindly up the street. The fact that I was conscious of the direction in which I was going seemed to me an assurance that I had not yet lost my mind. But it would go. Yes, I was sure of that. I could not, after I had realized that my beloved had gone away from me, live on. But indeed even to this day it has seemed to me that I have not fully realized the reality of Mr. Harding's passing. He had been to me not mortal but immortal; he just could not die.
Strangely enough, I did not cry. I could not cry. My head thumped mercilessly and it seemed to me I was conscious of passers-by looking at me, but I could not see wherein I was misbehaving. I was sane. I was maddeningly sane. I knew that in my hands I still carried the little colored handkerchiefs, and that I was on the main street. And I wondered why I had not thrown the handkerchiefs away. All the way up through the long street that is the main thoroughfare of Dijon I walked. What was there to do? Where was I to go? What did it matter? How strange that this should happen to me and I could not feel it within my heart to cry!
I remember a street car coming alongside of me in that narrow street. It seemed to bring me back partially. It was a long walk home, and I was very, very tired. Yes, I was so tired I might faint. And people might then find out, if I fainted and lost my mind and talked, that I was President Harding's sweetheart. I could not afford to faint. I would take the car back home and I would be safe, once I was with Helen Anderson.
​God, what torture to sit in that car! There were five or six blocks to ride, and they seemed interminable. The man called my stop—it was Place Octobre 30th—queer name for a street. October 30th! It was the 22nd of October that Elizabeth Ann was born—the 22nd of October just four years ago that fall. Elizabeth Ann! Our daughter. His daughter, and he had never seen her! And he was gone! Oh, no, no! It must be a mistake! I was asleep again and it was a horrible dream. If he were dead I would be crying. I pinched myself very hard and felt the hurt keenly. I could not remember ever having felt such queer pressure around my heart or such heaviness in my head. I reached our garden gate and mechanically let myself in with the great key I carried.
I entered my room. On the bed lay the cerise dress. Was it possible that I could actually have enthused over a mere dress? Was it I who had entered this room less than three hours before in high spirits? Good God, how meaningless everything seemed! How blank! I tried to ponder the meaning of death as it now affected me. But my mind was in a daze. I could not pin my thoughts to contemplative consideration of anything save the sickening emptiness and gnawing pangs I was conscious of within. The effects of the bulletin-board statement were very real; but the full significance of the statement itself I could not grasp. The possibility that I should eventually awaken to the full import of my sweetheart's passing seemed remote, for to me he continued to live. Only the world-void and the dullness of an inactive mentality seemed real then.
Helen must have heard me turn the key in the garden door, for she now called downstairs to me. I answered her. I even went to the foot of the stairs and called up to her in a voice that seemed strangely detached from me, "He is dead, Helen!"
She came downstairs to my room. I was sure that something would snap within my brain and I would be wholly without power of reason. So I must tell her. In incoherent fashion, and in a strange, hollow voice, I related to Helen Anderson how Mr. Harding was my sweetheart. As I listlessly revealed to her frag​ments of my strange story, Miss Anderson's face grew flushed from shock. I wondered vaguely at her changing expressions. I was puzzled that she should utter an exclamation when I told her that the Elizabeth Ann I talked so much about was President Harding's child—and mine!
I remember distinctly, even in my state of mental lassitude, that I was secretly amazed at her first question. "Well, how did you ever do it, Nan?" "How did I ever do it?" I repeated. "Why, yes, how could you 'get away with' having a child?" It was inconceivable to me, who had loved Mr. Harding for so long, how anyone could primarily feature the obstacles in mentally digesting my story, for love such as ours could encounter no insuperable obstacles to the full expression of its divine nature. But Helen Anderson had never married, and she was a conventional woman.
I stumbled through explanations, and as I reminisced aloud about Elizabeth Ann I found myself quivering anew from head to foot and the hot tears in my eyes. I was now really crying! It eased me. It was not so difficult after that to go on. The tenseness of my body gave place to violent paroxysms of shaking, but the relaxation I felt from talking with someone was great relief to me. Helen directed me to get to bed immediately. I was very tired, I thought, as I crept into bed. Helen stayed with me through the evening, reading to me, comforting me, until I told her I felt perhaps I could sleep. But I was too shaken to be alone, and that night, when I decided I could not stand it one moment longer, I crept upstairs and into Helen's bed, where I lay shivering in the dark, crouched close to my friend, like a hunted creature.