In the summer of 1936 my Rhodes Scholar and I were in Oxford, at the end of his three-year stint at Oxford University. Before returning to the States, where my husband was to take up a graduate assistantship at a university in western New York, we spent a few idyllic weeks in London, In those days London, like Paris in August, was dry and relatively empty as the people fled to the seashore, the Continent, the deep countryside, leaving the ancient villages that make up London—Chelsea, Kensington, Earls Court— emerging like tranquil hummocks when a meadow is drained. Every day we walked for miles, tracing the uniquity of London's jigsaw puzzle pieces, gorging ourselves in museums, and, in the late afternoons and evenings, relaxing in the society of friends who like my husband were "just down" from Oxford, as idle and carefree as we were.

In this leisurely ambience, where one is removed a few thin stratifying layers from nobility, we heard first a rumor, then a good deal of titillating gossip about the new king, Edward VIII, and his mysterious American lady friend. Many of the English we met, unwilling to believe that their king would or could be seriously charmed by a commoner, a married woman at that, and most certainly not an American, declared it a myth. But one friend boasted of meeting someone of infallible honesty who had actually seen her with the king. Not a word of this romance appeared in the British newspapers, discreetly muzzled; nor was there any definable gossip in the society magazines, which thrived, albeit in good taste, on such fare. The buzz was underground, persistent and growing louder.

One evening at dinner I produced a prize, which clinched