Free Maiden Flight by Harry Haskell

before we found one that would take us in. A miserable, uncomfortable place it was too. The waiters in the restaurant wereso dirty that I could hardly eat a mouthful of food. One day the boys and I went to see the Pantheon. Then we took a long walk and stood on the hill overlooking the Roman Forum and looked up in the guidebook all the things we could see. We walked around past the palaces of the Caesars to where the Circus Maximus used to be, over through the Arch of Constantine, and back to the Colosseum again. All the fine old ruins, straight out of my history books—another dream come true!
    And France—how I do adore that country! I’ve always thought I would feel at home in Le Mans, among Will’s friends. The boys and I didn’t have nearly enough time to sit back and be tourists. We never got to Nîmes or Avignon or Carcassonne, or any of the other important cathedral towns. How does the poem go? Tout le monde a son Carcassonne —“Every man has his Carcassonne.” Each of us has some goal, sometimes near at hand, that he simply can’t reach. When Harry and I get to Europe, we are going to see all the places I missed, starting with Rouen. I’ve been longing to go there ever since he brought us that lovely etching of the cathedral. I hung it in a place of honor in the “cold storage room” at Hawthorn Hill, facing the Muse of Aviation sculpture that the Aero Club of Sarthe presented to the boys . Harry and I have the selfsame picture in our dining room—and it makes me homesick every time I pass by!
    Harry’s letters from abroad were a joy forever. They were the first love letters anyone ever wrote to me—if only I had had the wit to see it! A regular storybook lover he was. He cared a good deal for my letters too, he told me. How queer it is to remember that I used to feel uneasy about corresponding with him—as if I were some sort of temptress, a white-haired, bespectacled Circe. Isn’t that the limit? After Isabel died, the very act of writing made mefeel closer to Harry. It was all I could do for him at a time when I wanted very much to do something . I had come to realize that Harry needed me in a way that Stef was incapable of. I told Stef that one reason why Harry and I were such devoted friends was that we sometimes needed each other, whereas he could never need me for anything. In fact, I don’t believe Stef could ever need anyone—not in the way I mean.
    Harry seemed needier than ever after he got back from Europe—which is no wonder considering all the troubles that had been heaped upon him. It was on that visit to Hawthorn Hill that he came within a whisker of sweeping me up passionately in his arms. Fancy that! He confessed it to me later, after we had officially become lovers. And to think I used to believe that Harry was all head and no heart! I hated like the dickens to see him go off with Orv to catch the train that time—but Stef and I had things to thrash out between us, and we could hardly talk freely with Harry under the same roof. Orv’s presence was trying enough! I survived the ordeal as fine as silk, barring a mild thumping in the back of my head and a few other disabilities. But I wouldn’t want the combination of Orv and Stef in the same house very often.
    One perk of becoming an Oberlin trustee was that it gave Harry and me a readymade excuse to be by ourselves from time to time, without giving Orv reason to worry. Of course, that was long before Little Brother knew there was anything to be worried about . I was still in the dark about Harry’s intentions myself—not that he was trying awfully hard to keep them secret. At the trustees’ meeting that November, for instance, I was talking on the telephone at the Park Hotel one morning when he and Professor Stetson unexpectedly came into the lobby. I can’t think why I hadn’t told Harryabout the meeting—maybe I had—but anyway I was surprised to see him. I was even more surprised when he admitted that he had planned