As Dave Justice swung around a corner of The Empire State Building on his way to work he looked at the young woman swinging toward him, fifty feet away, and his mind stopped. When she looked him in the eye her hands and arms slowed, and he knew that her mind stopped, too. He held her eyes—-thirty feet, twenty, ten—-and he stopped walking. At five feet she stopped, too.

He said, “You walk so confidently, and you look so glad to be alive. Is that how you feel?”

“Yes,” she said; “I do. You feel the same, don’t you?”

“Yes, and much more so each minute. You’re not married or engaged, or any horrible thing like that, are you?”

“Horrible for whom?”

“For me, of course. And, I hope, for you.”

“Do you always get what you hope for?”

“If I work for it, yes.”

She laughed. A free and easy laugh. Then she said, softly, with a twinkle in her eyes, “If you engage me for dinner, would that be horrible?”

Dave answered, suddenly very serious, “Wonderfully horrible.”

She gasped and little more than breathed, “We’ll meet at eight, right here?”

“Make it seven, right here.”

As Dave was walking away he thought of something. Half turning back he said, loudly, over a sudden blaring of horns, “What’s your name!?”

Half turning, too, she shouted, “Victory!”

And The Empire State Building soared up cleanly into the sun.