What happens when a bookish schoolmaster, lonely for the first time in London, runs into an equally lonely girl on the bus, the most beautiful he has ever seen, and they seek refuge in each other? How will it develop? David comes to realize that Jo, in her ambition to succeed as an actress, is actually being torn apart by her estranged parents and a ruthless agent. Only he, it seems, can hold her together. And will their love stand the stresses and strains of war time?Jo’s ambition takes her to Hollywood; David, brutally rejected by her, is recruited into Military Intelligence and the war will take him to Africa and then to Italy where he meets the enigmatic ‘Saffo’ and her partisan companions in the wintry mountains of the Apennines. He has never forgotten Jo however for all his bitterness over the way she left him. Whether or not they will ever meet again and how it will turn out is the theme of this story.