In the first photo, Sam hands Irene out of the rear seat of the Hispano-Suiza limousine that delivered them from the Moana Hotel. He’s wearing a tuxedo, she’s wearing the evening gown provided for her by George Morrow, a long, pale, gauzy confection made especially by a Hollywood costume designer, whose name is now lost to history. Sam’s left hand holds her left hand, and his right hand disappears at the small of her back. Despite this physical contact, there seems to be no particular intimacy between them. Their faces point toward the crowd, to the various municipal officials and local business bigwigs, not toward each other. Sam Mallory is simply a gentleman helping a lady from the back of an automobile. This photograph was reprinted in hundreds of newspapers across the United States and even around the world, and nobody had the nerve to suggest—at least in print—that there was anything untoward about their association.

In the second photo, which was recently discovered in the archives of the Associated Press, Irene stands at the podium, flanked by the territorial governor on one side and Sam on the other. She speaks into the giant microphone. Her expression is both passionate and exhausted. Her eyebrows form sharp, eager peaks. Her hands grip the lectern on each side. To her left, Sam Mallory stares up at her with an absorption that might be interpreted as surprise, or rapture, or merely an intense interest in what his flying partner had to say that evening. Whatever this expression meant, however, it wasn’t indifference. It was not gentlemanly concern. If you were Mrs. Sam Mallory and opened up your early-edition newspaper on August first to find this photograph instead of the one that actually appeared there, the one taken outside the Hispano-Suiza, you would have excellent cause to drop your cup of morning joe and say to yourself, Uh oh.

But while a photograph may tell a thousand words, it doesn’t tell the full story. It’s an instant, a snapshot, a single frame of a lengthy motion picture. A sentence lifted from a novel. Irene, of course, had no idea what emotions painted Sam Mallory’s face as she made her speech in the hotel ballroom that evening. She was exhausted, and she still couldn’t hear very well, and hadn’t even imagined she would be called on to speak. She had done her duty already! She’d shaken all the hands and said nice things to everybody about Hawai’i and the hotel. She’d expressed amazement at the suckling pig, the sweetness of the pineapple. When the speeches began, she sat back and figured her work was done. Sam rose and delivered a spirited address—or so it seemed, though she couldn’t make out the words—which she dutifully applauded while checking her wristwatch.

It was Sam who nudged her shoulder on his return. “Irene? Your turn.”

“Me?”

“They want you to speak.”