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took me one day when he had dropped into my office at closing time. "If it is gone, then — " he shrugged, "it is gone."
"But maybe it isn't," I answered stubbornly. Across my mind were racing words that I would write to Bruce, to bring back the dream — passionate words of remorse and love and longing. Surely then Bruce would answer what was in his heart. "I have to know!" I said it aloud, urgently, so that Ferenc reached out his hand to cover mine on the smooth dark polished wood of the table.
"You will know," he told me gently, as if reassuring a child. Then softly, his brown eyes shining, "If you truly wish to know, you will receive a sign."
Those words came back to me when I had left him and was climbing the steps to my rooming house door. What sort of sign? Would it be in a letter from Bruce? That letter for which I had waited ten days? I felt the familiar choking suspense as I pushed the door open and ran toward the hall table. I was getting used to the sensation, and to the sickening slow deflation when I found no letter there.
But today was different. I saw the picture on the postcard, a colored photograph of a fighter plane. My hand went to it slowly, and stopped almost in dread of finding that it was for me. I did not want my' first message from Bruce to be written on a picture postcard! But that was his round, uneven boyish writing on the back. I studied the address, telling myself his hand had written it, trying to get a thrill from the idea. But it was not there. My eyes went slowly to the message, hoping against hope for some kind of cryptic communication that would have some secret meaning for my eyes alone — a sign! But all I saw was, "Dear Jan: Sorry not to have written sooner but got swamped right away in seventeen-hour daily program. Swell stuff, but very very tough. Will write more when