They had reached the end of the long Galleria for the second time and turned. The crowd was thin. The restaurants were filling. Shutters were rattling down over the windows of the tempting shops. Said Ora abruptly, “I think I’d like to dine in one of these cafés--the Milano. The Bristol dining-room is a little Ritz, and it’s a bore to dress.” Valdobia leaned forward with a pleasant smile. “I should like nothing better, but you must dine with me.” “Why not? What do you say, Ida?” “I’d love it. The food is good and the crowd more interesting.” They entered the bright café and seated themselves at one of the side tables, the two girls on the bench against the wall, Valdobia in the chair opposite. A number of the tables were already occupied, several by stout comfortable couples, but the majority by men with their hats on, playing dominoes or reading the evening papers. Opposite the door was a long table set forth with the delicacies of the season: raw meat, winter vegetables, oranges, and kicking lobsters. Valdobia, assiduously waited upon by the proprietor himself (whose wife, surrounded by several of her children, smiled benignantly from the cashier’s desk), ordered a special dinner; a light soup (the table d’hôte soup was a meal in itself), spaghetti, inimitably cooked veal in brown butter, salad, freshly caught fish, ices, and a bottle of the host’s most precious Chianti. “I never could have pictured you in a Bohemian restaurant,” said Ora, smiling brilliantly into the face of her host. “Have you ever been in a place like this before?” “About as often as I have weeks to my credit.” He looked steadily into her snapping eyes. “You have studied Italians to little purpose if you’ve not discovered their partiality for their native cooking. These plain little cafés are the last strongholds in our large cities. Even the restaurants where the business men go for luncheon are queer imitations of London or Paris.” “We like to come here because the men pay no attention to us. It is men of your class that know how to make us thoroughly uncomfortable.” “Quite so. Every class has its own code. In ours it may be said that the women set the pace. They demand open admiration and we are gallant enough to give it. This class bothers itself little about the unattainable, and merely throws you the passing tribute they would throw to the Queen, or to a beautiful work of art.” “Which they appreciate. Would that our working-classes did. On this side the masses are as likely as not to spend their holidays in a picture gallery or a museum. Ours can think of nothing better than a saloon.”