There'll be nights when you'll wake up
shivering and crying and you'll want to kill yourself. Why? Because you
didn't marry me. Because you had your chance to marry me and turned it
down. Remember. Remember how I'm standing here talking to you--unknown--a
country boy. Remember that when you hear of me again.'
"'What are you going to do?' I asked.
"I'm going to be president of the United States,' he said. And he said it
so that there was truth in it. As I looked at him standing on the steps I
felt frightened to death. There he was, going to be president of the
United States, and there was I, throwing the greatest chance in the world
away. He knew I believed him and that made it worse. He went on talking in
a sort of oracular singsong that drove me mad.
"'I'm not asking you again. You've had your chance, Mugs. And you've
thrown it away. All right. It'll not be said afterward that John Marcey
made a fool of himself. Good-bye.'"
* * * * *
The prima donna sighed. "Yes," she went on, looking into her empty teacup;
"it was good-bye. He walked away, erect, his shoulders high, his body
swinging. And I sat there shivering. I had turned down a president of the
United States! Me, a gawky little Iowa girl.
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