The telegram arrived at 2:17 a.m., shoved under the door of Lauren Bacall’s suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The paper was crinkled, the ink slightly smudged. It read: “I miss you. Come to me.” There was no sender’s name, no punctuation beyond the period, no explanation. But Bacall didn’t need one. She knew it was from Humphrey Bogart, stationed with the USO unit on a Navy base in the Pacific. And she knew something was terribly wrong.

It was early 1945. Bacall had been living in a haze of anxiety since Bogart had shipped out for the war tour. The USO had asked him to lend his voice and presence to boost morale for the troops. Bogart agreed, feeling it was his duty, but Bacall had watched him board the plane with a knot in her stomach. They had been lovers for months by then, wrapped in the first real intimacy either of them had ever known. Yet distance turned even certainty into trembling doubt.

Bacall later wrote in her memoir “By Myself and Then Some,” “I kept hearing planes overhead and thinking, ‘Could that be his coming back early? Or his going even farther away?’ I thought I’d been in love before. I hadn’t known a thing about it until Bogie.”

The telegram had taken over 24 hours to reach her due to rerouting delays. Bacall spent that time in a storm of silence, with no calls, no letters. When the envelope finally reached her, she didn’t stop to think. She called the studio, canceled her appointments, packed a single suitcase, and was on the first available military-affiliated flight by noon.

Flying during wartime wasn’t glamorous. Bacall was crammed into a cargo seat between servicemen returning to duty. The plane landed at a makeshift airstrip near Honolulu, and she was driven to the camp in an open jeep. Dust clung to her skin, and the sun glared unforgivingly on her face. But her heart beat with one thought: He wants me.

When she arrived, Bogart was already waiting. He stood outside the barracks, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, wearing the same weathered jacket she’d seen him wear in “To Have and Have Not.” She ran to him without hesitation. Neither spoke for a moment. Then he wrapped his arms around her, pressed his forehead to hers, and murmured, “You’re here. I didn’t think you’d come.”

Bacall’s eyes filled with tears. She whispered, “Don’t ever write that kind of telegram again unless you’re ready for me to drop everything and come across the world.”

They spent three days together, tucked away in a borrowed officer’s cabin by the sea. There were no grand restaurants or hotel beds. They cooked simple meals on a hot plate, took long walks by the shore, and lay awake at night listening to the wind. Bacall remembered later, “It was the first time I knew I wanted a life, not just a career. I wanted it with him.”

It was during their final evening, watching the sunset through the shuttered cabin window, that Bogart turned to her and asked, “Would you marry me if I asked?” Bacall didn’t hesitate. “Only if you mean it,” she replied. He smiled faintly and said, “You know I do.”

The proposal wasn’t accompanied by a ring, nor was it part of a carefully orchestrated plan. It came out of fear, longing, and clarity born from separation. That telegram, a few typed words that arrived too late to ease her panic but early enough to pull her toward him, became the defining moment of their commitment.

She later said in an interview, “When I stepped off that plane, and I saw him waiting, I knew I was home. That wasn’t just love. That was destiny.”

She kept the telegram in her bedside drawer until the day he died.

Bacall always called that night in 1945 the most terrifying and most affirming of her life. What began in fear ended in forever.