Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1944)

wv/W/ GUARANTEED a lovelier make-up... Hampden Synchronized Make-up gives you a glamorous new complexion immediately. Never causes dry skin. (Applied without water or sponge.) Helps conceal skin flaws. Keeps powder on for hours. Try Hampden; if it does not give you a lovelier make-up, return to 251 Fifth Ave., N.Y., for full refund. POWD'H-BRSE *l • 501 • 25 and trial size plus tax (WV\J Never dries your skin ! feretory o! S45 Spring $t, Ajlimlo. Go • Chicago. Merchandise M<in CO, 358 Fiflh Ave., N. Y. in Coriodn Canx.<i-in tody Carstt Co. Ik They said, then, about that First War, that we could keep out. They said it was one of Europe's wars and that it was none of our business. The sleek fat men and the experts ponderously prated that Germany had no designs whatever on the United States. In the White House, a man haggard with his own private tragedy, grappled with the terrible problems of war and peace. Once in a cabinet meeting, he said to the men who urged him to declare war immediately: "It is an awful power that a President has. It is easy to beat the drums and wave the sword. But I'm thinking of the boys who would have to do the actual fighting. If I must ask them to fight and die, I want them to know that I spared them no effort to preserve peace. I want them to be sure that they are fighting for something worthwhile, for security and for a world at peace . . ." But the grinding wheel of history was not to be stopped. The shadow of the war in Europe crept across the waves of the Atlantic; it began to creep into the consciousness of America that all the world was one, that there were no barriers across the circle of the globe. And in the White House, through the long nights, a lonely man sifted the growing pile of reports that flowed across his desk, and in each one there was an undertone like the sound of distant thunder: War . . . War . . . War . . . He was lonely. That was his ewn private hell. They tried — Margaret, Nell and Jessie — to keep him occupied, they tried to fill the dead void. But there was always the shadow of emptiness upon his face and in his heart. The days followed each other; the days and the weeks and the endless months. Winter passed, and then Spring came, and it was a little easier to soften the pangs of memory with the cushion of time. It was raining one day as he came into the White House, a soft Spring rain that hinted at coming sunshine and cloudless skies. He came into the spacious lobby, shaking the rain from his hat, and looking up, he suddenly saw the woman who was standing there. For the first time in months, something touched him. In the brief moment that their eyes met some common chord seemed to leap the distance between them. She was a fair, slim woman with a mouth touched with gaiety and eyes that hinted at intensity. hearts ease . . . He heard someone saying: "I'd like you to meet Mrs. Edith Boiling Gait—" Her voice was soft, pleasant with a hint of the South: "Mr. President . . ." "Mrs. Gait," he said formally. Later they were to laugh at the formality of that first conversation. Laughingly, he blamed it on Congress; she said that she felt vaguely like a Committee on Introductions as she talked to him that first time. It became a joke between them. He found common laughter with Edith Boiling Gait that made him, for the first time in the long months, feel alive. He showed her about the city. They played golf together. He sent her a book. He sent her a corsage, an orchid. In the box there was a card. "You are the only woman I know who can wear an orchid. Generally it's the orchid that wears the woman. W. W." That night they dined together at the White House, and later in the living room that looked out on the wide spacious green of the lawns that faced the street, he spoke to her. It was just coming dusk, and the first stars were faint in the sky, sketched against the slowly deepening blue.