But the Clark Street bridge, with a February gale blowing from the west down the straight reach of the river, is not to be negotiated lightly.  Strong as they were, the force of the wind actually stopped them at the edge of the draw, caught Rose a little off her balance, turned her half around and pressed her up against him.

She made an odd noise in her throat, a gasp that had something of a sob in it, and something of a laugh.

For a moment—­so vivid was the blaze of memory—­he seemed veritably to be standing on another bridge (over the north branch of the Drainage Canal, of all places) with the last, leonine blizzard of a March, which had been treacherously lamblike before, swirling drunkenly about.  He had been tramping for hours over the clay-rutted roads with a girl he had known a fortnight and had asked, the day before, to marry him.  They had been discussing this project very sensibly, they’d have said, in the light of pure reason; and they were both unconscionably proud of the fact that since the walk began there had been nothing a bystander could have called a caress or an endearment between them.  But there on the bridge, a buffet of the gale had unbalanced her, and she—­with just that little gasping laugh—­had clutched at his shoulder.  He had flung one arm around her and then the other.  Without struggling at all she had held herself away for a moment, taut as a strung bow, her hands clutching his shoulders, her forearms braced against his chest; then, with the rapturous relaxation of surrender, her body went soft in his embrace and her arms slid round his neck; their faces, cool with the fine sleety sting of the snow, came together.

The vision passed.  The wind was colder to-night than that March blizzard had been, and the dry groan of a passing electric car came mingled with the whine of it.  Muffled pedestrians, bent doggedly down against it, jostled them as they went by.

He steadied her with a hand upon her shoulder, slipped round to the windward side, and linked his arm within hers.  But it was a moment before they started on again.  Their hands touched and, electrically, clasped.  Like his, hers were ungloved.  She’d had them in her ulster pockets.

“Do you remember the other bridge?” he asked.

Her answer was to press, suddenly—­fiercely—­the hand she held up against her breast.  Even through the thickness of the ulster, he could feel her heart beat.  They crossed the bridge, but the hand-clasp did not slacken when they reached the other side.  Their pace quickened, but neither of them was conscious of it.

As for Rodney, he was not even conscious what street they were walking on, nor how far they went.  He had no destination consciously in mind or any avowed plan or hope for what should happen when they reached it.  Yet he walked purposefully and, little by little, faster.  He looked about him in a sort of dazed bewilderment when she disengaged her hand and stopped, at last, at the corner of the delicatessen shop, beside the entrance to her little tunnel.