"Oh, I know," smiled the prima donna, "you're the Great Lover and all that. But you never could talk as John did that evening on the porch--in Iowa. He stood there and said, 'Mugs, you're going to regret this moment for the rest of your life. 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. And, what was worse, I was in love with him, too. Well, I remember sitting on the porch till the folks came home from prayer meeting and I remember going to bed and lying awake all night, crying and shivering. "I didn't see John Marcey again. I stayed only a week longer and then I came to Chicago to study music. My folks were able to finance me for a time. But I never forgot him. It was John who had started me for Chicago. And it was John who kept me practicing eight hours a day, studying and practicing until I thought I'd drop. "I was going to make good. When he became president I was going to be somebody. I wasn't going to do what he said I would, wake up cursing myself and remembering my lost chance. So I went right on working my head off and finally it was Paris and finally it was a job in London. And I never stopped working. "But the funny part was that I gradually forgot about John Marcey. When I had arrived as an opera singer he was entirely dead for me. But last month I visited my home town. I was passing through and couldn't resist getting off and looking up people I knew as a girl. My folks are dead, you know.