“He was a lovely young man,” Lillie allowed, sounding amused.

“But saintly?” Douglas asked rhetorically, and shook his head.

They were both firmly shushed by the gentleman who sat behind us. Mr. Thomas, unaware, continued his encomium. A brilliant young archaeologist before the war, Lawrence was “a born strategist who out-thought and outwitted the Turkish and German commanders in practically every engagement.” At the head of his troops, in the thick of every battle, Lawrence rapidly rose from junior lieutenant to full colonel. “But he dislikes titles,” Mr. Thomas told us, “and prefers to be known as plain Lawrence to general and private alike.” In fact, this modern Galahad was rather shy, Mr. Thomas confided. “Indeed, the Terror of the Turks can blush like a schoolgirl.” Those terrified Turks had put a princely price on his head, but so beloved was the twenty-eight-year-old commander, no one had betrayed him. Thus, we were told, the blue-eyed scholar became, in less than a year, the most powerful man in Arabia, leading the greatest army raised in that land in five centuries.

Indeed, Mr. Thomas seemed to have forgotten General Allenby entirely, and gave young Neddy Lawrence personal credit for the downfall of the entire Ottoman Empire. “Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia, and the Holy Land—all freed after centuries of Turkish oppression! Why, I would not be surprised,” Mr. Thomas concluded, “if centuries from now, Lawrence of Arabia stood out as a legendary figure along with Achilles, Siegfried, and El Cid.”

Well, my goodness! You can just picture us emerging from the theater, dazzled by what we had seen and heard, astonished to find ourselves back in plain old Cleveland. Unwilling to let the evening end, little groups congregated on the street: strangers drawn together by shared experience. The earlier drizzle had turned to a cold, spitting rain, just this side of sleet, but we were so caught up in the moment! Illness was the last thing on our minds.