Page:Wiggin--Ladies-in-waiting.djvu/205

  because of that uncertainty I cannot trust myself in the daily company of the two persons most deeply concerned in my decision.

A sea voyage is the best thing in the world to blow away doubts or difficulties; it also clears the air so that one can see one’s course, whether it be toward the north of duty or the south of desire.

My work for a long time has been to report interviews, take stenographic records, and write hundreds of letters for Mr. Winthrop during the somewhat protracted discussion that preceded the acquisition of the Virgin Islands by the United States. It is odd that these tasks should have fallen to me, who added below Clive Winthrop’s signature to many communications the typed initials C. A. C., for I have a special interest in these new possessions of ours, a very close and sentimental one, since I was born on St. Thomas, one of the Virgin Islands, and christened Charlotte Amalia after the little red-roofed town on the shore of the perfect harbor. My birth in St. Thomas was entirely