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“Do the two of you know who he is?” He then proceeded to fill Kate and her mother in on his exceptional feats, and the records he had broken in the past few years. Clarke seemed to know them all.

As they got in the car, Kate stared out the window, thinking of the time she had spent talking to him. The records he had broken had meant nothing to her although she admired him for it, and realized that he was important and accomplished in the rarefied atmosphere in which he lived. But it was the very essence of him that drew her to him.

His power, his strength, his gentleness, even his awkwardness had touched her in a way no one else ever had. She knew at that very moment, without question, that he had taken some part of her with him, and what was troubling her as she looked out the window, was that she had no idea if she'd ever see him again.

AFTER THE GLITTERING debutante ball at Christmas, as Kate had suspected, she didn't hear from Joe Allbright. Despite the card her father had given him, he didn't call.

She read about him, and made a point of looking for news of him, and she saw his name in the newspapers, and even newsreels of him when he won races from time to time. He had broken several records in California, and had won acclaim for the latest plane he'd designed with the help of Dutch Kindelberger and John Leland Atwood. She knew now that Joe's flying was legendary, but he was off in his own world, far from hers, and had undoubtedly forgotten her.

He seemed entirely part of another life, light-years from hers.

And she was certain now that she would never see him again. For the rest of her life, she would read about him, and remember the hours she'd spent talking to him one night when she was a young girl.

In April, she was accepted at Radcliffe, and her parents were ecstatic, as was she. The war was not going well in Europe, and they talked about it constantly. Her father still insisted that Roosevelt would not allow the United States to get involved, but nonetheless, accounts of what was happening were disturbing, and two of the young men she knew had gone to England and joined the RAE The Axis had begun a counteroffensive in North Africa, and General Rommel was relentlessly winning battles with the Afrikakorps.

In Europe, Germany had invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, and Italy had declared war on Yugoslavia. And in London, there were as many as two thousand people being killed per day in Luftwaffe raids.