She offered three encores: an elegant Scarlatti Sonata in D minor (K. 9), Rachmaninoff’s flashy transcription of the gopak from Mussorgsky’s “Sorochintsy Fair,” and Moritz Moszkowski’s scintillating étude “Sparks.”

Let her go, Gallagher. I've got everything on skids, even the presses. Au revoir—or perhaps one should say, Au reservoir.

Looking through the window into the misty morning sky over Taipei from his suite at a guest house on Yangmingshan on July 8, Fan Yuan-yen's eyes were filled with tears of joy-an experience that he had never before known. Just the day before, he had made a successful flight to freedom in a MIG19, from Chingkiang in Fukien Province on the Chinese mainland to an air force base in southern Taiwan.

The magic of those minutes in the kala juggah, when she had sat with her little hand in his, came back to him. He made up his mind to see a lot more of Sheilagh when he got back.