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| | , But things” Hor Work oUt i Kt ‘their weddi they took to thairSad in what w in effect a nigh®nare honeymoon. Paris was emptying fast and the roads leading out of the capital were jammed with réfugees. Donalg) and Melinda, with a friend in whose car they were travelling, got only as far as Chartres and they spent their first married night in a feld. They head west The next morning they headed west. They were living in a time of the most extraordinary uncer- tainty and «tonfusion, but they still hoped it would be possible to spend a few days’ honeymoon before deciding upon the next thove. : > They had thought of going to Biarritz and. indeed, after report- ing to Bordeaux, where the British Embassy had established iiself, they did spend two days in a village not far from Biar- ritz. But once again events moved ahead of them; the capitu- ‘ation of France, now led by Marshal Pétain. was imminent and. with it, the evacuation of the British Embassy. They hurried back 10 Bordeaux and there. on June 23, they went on beard a British destroyer}, which sailed in the Inte after- noon. Three hours later, oul. at sea but stil within sight of France, they were transferted to a British teamp steamer, and in it they made a fantastic journey of ten days to England, (World. eepyright] TOMORROW: \ @ The diplomatic - round: London, Washington, Cairo @ Maclean's . Strange.. moods woman Melinda velce wag slightly Rusk, ] slightly breath less, American in ~ timbre, certainly, but the almost accentless voice of the educated, travelled classes, Her sigters--usually any Rirl'’s most candid erltles— sav that, anyhow, until the birth of her first child, Melinda had an exquisite figure—and Indeed when I first met. her, when she was 82. she could have changed very little, for she wag still extremely attractive. She dressed in excetlent taste but did not appear to be deeply interested fn clothes, She had a kind of fasual, effortless elegance which could make a baitle- dress look smart, and in & way seemed to prefer old clothes to new--a somewhat Unusual taste in. a woman, Possibly it was that she war so Often preoccupied with her own thoughts and dreams -~whatever ther were, Her moods An incident, highly reveal- ing of Melinds’s “ attitude towards elothes, oecurred While she and Maclean were living in Washington when he was First Secretary at the British, Embassy there and they were invited to what was Melinda’s frst " White House bali. . Her. immediate reaction waa the entirely feminine one of “I've absolutely no ing to wear.” The second step was also normal: frantic telephone messages to her favourite New York store to fr oa g@azzling new creation, ehaviour. The dregs arrived, was tried on, approved—and practically forgotten, Melinda simply could not be bothered with it and went to the ball in a little frock belonging to one of her sisters. She was always very popular in almost any circle ~™and yet entirely Jacked self-confidence. She was naturally shy yet gregarious as a starling; extremely lazy but given to sudden bursts of energy: vague but capable of decision and determina- tion, vain but curiously humble; apparently frail and defenceless but in fact tough and self-reliant. And although. she was Renerally tractable she could on oceasion be quite dominant, Her weakness Bui unlike Maclean, who Was definitely a split person- ality, one man one day and quite another the next, there were no two Melindas: this was Melinda, this living amalgam of moods and tempers, differing from hour to hour as another facet caught ihe prevailing itiu- ence, but always un- mistakably the same girt. She lived on her emotions. Aa Ai ee emotions. She had an ex- eellent mind, but was: men. tally lazy and rarely took the trouble to think things out for herself if she could And someone to do it for her. Tt was thug that when, aged 23, she met 26-year-old Donald Maclean she became completely under the influ- ence of his keen, incisive mind and his knowledge of the world—already so. much greater than her own. imperceptibly, uneon- sciously even, Melinda beran ’ to take her views from him ~except possibly on politics, in which she was always utterly without interest~and this. plus her loyalty and, to " some extent. her vanity. wag” Tr undoing. Was swayed primarily by her - mcmama