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| | | | | ' Biarritz and, indeed, after report- + iiself, they did spend two days they took to th@grdad in what wi in effect a nigh®mare Foneymoon. Paris was emptying fast and the were jammed with refugees. Donald and Melinda, wit! friend in whose car they were travelling, got only as far as Chartres and they spent their, frst married night in a field. They head west The next morning they headed} west. They were living in a time of the most extraordinary uncer- tainty and confusion, but they still hoped it would be possible to spend 2 few days’ honeymoon before deciding upon the next thove «They had thougnt of going to| ing to Bordeaux, where the British Embassy had established in a village not fat from Biar- ritz, But once again events moved ahead of them ; the capitu- lation of France, now led by] Marshal Pétain, was imminent) and. with it, the evacuation of} the British Embassy. They hurried back to Bordeaux and there. on June 23, they went on board a British’ destroyer which sailed in the late after- noon. Three hours later, out at sea but stil within sight of France, they were transferted to| a British tramp steamer, and in! it they made a fantastic journey of ten days to England, (World copyright] TOMORROW: @ The diplomatic i round: London,| ‘Washington, Cairo, @ Maclean's . strange. moods - , ephone messages to her favourite New York store to woman Melinda ; ER voice was i slightly husky, q slightly breath- i less, American in y ~ timbre, certainly, | but the almost accentless ; voice of the educated, Ht rit say that, anyhow, until the birth of her first child, Melinda had an exquisite figure—and indeed when I first met her, when she was | 32. she could have changed very little, for she was still extremely attractive. 1 She dressed in excellent taste but did not appear to be deeply interested in clothes, She had a kind of ‘| dasuat, effortless elegance which could make a battle- 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 was so often preoccupied with her own thoughts and dreams ~-whatever they were, Her moods An incident, highly reveal- | ing) of Melinda's” attitude | towards clothes, occurred | while she and Maclean were living 3n Washington when he was First Secretary at the British Embassy there and they were invited to what was Melinda’s first ‘ White House ball. : Her. immediate reaction waa the éntirely feminine one of “I've absolutely no! ing to wear." The second step was also normal: frantic dazzling new ereal on, 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 and yet entirely lacked self-confidence, She was naturally shy yet gregarious as a startling; extremely lazy but given to sudden bursts of energy: vague but capable of decision and determina: tion; vain but curious ; humble; apparently frail and defenceless but in fact tough and self-reliant. And although she was generally tractable she could on occasion be quite dominant, Her weakness But, unlike Maclean, who was definitely a split person- ality, one man one day ‘and |, Guile 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 the prevailing intlu- ence, but always une | mistakably the same girt. She lived on her emotions. Was swayed primarily by her -| emotions. She had’ an ex- cellent mind, but was men- tally Jazy and rarely took the trouble ‘to think things out for herself if she could find someone to do it for her. Tt was thus that when, aged 23, she met 26-year-old Donald Maclean she became completely under the influ- ) ence of bis keen, incisive mind and his knowledge of the world—already so much reater than her own. imperceptibly, | uncon: sciously even, Melinda began 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 vanits