t 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 i