Marguerite had never imagined she would marry again. She had many male friends and some “charming” interludes, but none of these relationships had ever tempted her to give up her freedom and settle down. Then she met Arthur Middleton Blake.
Marguerite gave few details about how she came to know the aspiring British actor other than to say she met him soon after she returned to New York. His resume described him as an Oxford University athlete, slender, broad-shouldered, and with iron-gray hair. He had spent many years in the United States and served in the cavalry during the Spanish-American War. Like Marguerite, he had a talent for linguistics, speaking French, German, Spanish, and Italian.12 And he, too, was searching for something to give meaning to his life.
When Marguerite found herself falling in love, her first instinct was to flee. She accepted an offer from the Near East Relief Society to write a series of articles on the organization’s work aiding Turkish and Armenian refugees. According to her account, the society agreed to pay her travel expenses to the 13 visit settlement camps in the Middle East and write articles that would publicize the organization’s refugee work. Under the arrangement, she would keep any money she made on articles she sold to newspapers and magazines, but there is no evidence she succeeded in selling any pieces about the trip. It is possible the trip again was a U.S. State Department intelligence mission to a volatile region, although no reports have been located.
The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison 