Despite the movie's Harlequin-level romance novel title, the unlikely pairing of classic Hollywood leading lady Claudette Colbert and resident bad-boy Orson Welles actually works in this intriguing albeit far-fetched 1946 melodrama directed by the relatively undistinguished Irving Pichel. Written by Lenore J. Coffee, the plot concentrates initially on newly married John and Elizabeth McDonald, who are suddenly separated when he enlists for combat duty during WWI. Just as she discovers she is pregnant, Elizabeth receives word that John is dead, but the truth is that he is so badly injured that he doesn't want to return to her as a cripple. Once recovered, he takes on the guise of an Austrian scientist named Erik Kessler. Twenty years elapse, and Elizabeth has remarried to businessman Larry Hamilton, who has coincidentally recruited Kessler to test the company's new product formula. Elizabeth meets Kessler but does not recognize him to be her long lost John due to plastic surgery. However, John knows her, and they become intertwined again when their son Drew decides to enlist in the RAF years before the U.S. enters WWII.<br /><br />The story sounds preposterous on paper, but it is quite compelling to see the movie evolve toward its inevitable resolution. Colbert is her naturally effervescent self, though she is well into her forties here and a mite too mature for the early scenes when she is playing a blushing newlywed to the twelve-years younger Welles. Nonetheless, she provides surprising bite to the scenes where Elizabeth confronts her own prejudices about war. In the juiciest role, Welles has a field day as the crippled, defeated Kessler as he keeps his naturally grandiose manner in check. Perennial also-ran George Brent is wooden as expected as Hamilton, but a couple of familiar faces shine as the children - Richard Long as the grown Drew and an eight-year old Natalie Wood, blonde and sporting a convincing Austrian accent, as Kessler's adopted daughter Margaret. There are some lapses in credibility beginning with Elizabeth's inability to recognize John and ending with her rather sudden resignation that John is right in his perspective on the past. Regardless, it's a surprisingly involving movie with a mature perspective on love and war, a curio sadly forgotten today and well worth a look now.