Dart writes his first letter of the day in the pre-dawn hours. When his relatives left town, he and Burke decided to tour Cleveland at night.

They explored the Flats and all the industrial sights Dart has written about so eloquently in earlier letters. They saw all the traffic exiting downtown after the “Festival of Freedom” fireworks and continued until they came to a late-night Big Boy restaurant called Manners. When they stopped to get a bite to eat, they ran into none other than Dart’s friend Fred, two other guys from school, and their three dates. All night long, Burke and Dart ran into friends who were out experiencing life after dark.

Five of Dart’s friends are home on leave, and they all depart on the same train Thursday night. They made plans to “do the town” the night before returning to their various branches of the military.

Dart got philosophical about the happy accidents of running into so many old friends. “Things like this really make me sure that our lives are planned for us. So many chance meetings and unusual happenings wouldn’t, couldn’t come true if we were not being guided by some Divine Hand.”

After enumerating several instances that seemed too perfect to be coincidental, he continues, “It must have been planned for us to be happy and so deeply in love, Dot. If it’s possible to love a person with every ounce of energy one has, and then to increase that love by leaps and bounds in but 35 short hours, then that’s the case now. I live for the day when I can use that New Haven timetable again, when we can be together next, and so much in love.”

He expressed the frustration of being with a person he is so incredibly fond of and finding it hard to speak his feelings. He recalls Sunday afternoon when he kissed her in the car and told her he loved her. He says it was one of the biggest moments of his life. He has relived every fleeting instant of his visit countless times, with countless more to come.

Next, we find a letter written at the other end of this same day, the last one he will write from home for a very long time.

He visited Case this morning and saw everyone except the two people he most wanted to see. He was unable to thank Rousch for his role in getting Dot and Dart together. And he missed seeing the professor of his survey class from whom Dart had hoped to get a map to take with him.

Dart and the boys, each in a different uniform, gathered at Fred’s house where they spent a couple of hours listening to symphonic records. After lunch downtown, they returned to Dart’s house on the pretext of seeing his mother, but really to see Dot’s photograph. Fred commented that now he understood why Dart left town on his short leave. “But,” said Dart, “Fred doesn’t know the half of it. I like you for ‘you’ and not just your looks. Of course, if a much desired and cherished gift is in an attractive or beautiful package, it’s value in desirability is greatly increased.”

Dart closes the letter by saying this was the best leave a guy could hope for; a fine family, two days with the girl of the rest of his life, and a day with old buddies.

And finally, it’s Dot’s turn to get a word in. With typical good humor, Dot relates the difficulty of getting back to work today. “…I can’t remember ever having to put forth such an effort to stir from a horizontal position. Be that as it may, and in spite of great odds, I managed to get here and punch the time clock 5 minutes before the zero hour. …the only thing that has kept me awake.. is the constant telling and re-telling of what we did Sunday and Monday and how much fun I had.”

She writes how sad she is to know there will be no letter from Dart waiting for her on the hall table today, but she promises to forgive him if it happens again for the same reason. “Aren’t I awful?,” she asks. “The saying is ‘give ’em an inch and they’ll want a mile,’ but in my case, it’s ‘Give me two days and I’ll want you forever.'”

She spent a few lines remembering where they were just two days ago and then decided she’d be better off if she stopped living in the past and started living for the future.

Her cousins Jane and Betty brought over some homemade blueberry muffins and then convinced Dot to join them at the movies. They saw Gary Cooper in “The Story of Dr. Wassel.” Dot loved the picture because it was Navy, through and through, and because it is the first war film she has seen in a long time where both the hero and the heroine were alive at the end of the film.

As I read these months of letters, I’m often struck by the similar themes and thoughts expressed by the two authors on the same day. Neither has had a chance to read the other’s letter yet, but they seem to be on the same wave length so often. It must be love.