They crossed the city, and on Brooklyn Bridge watched the suburbanites going home, crowding surface-car and elevated. From their perch on the giant spider's web of steel, they saw the Long Island Sound steamers below them, passing through a maelstrom of light on waves that trembled like quicksilver. They found a small Italian restaurant, free of local-color hounds and what Carl called "hobohemians," and discovered _fritto misto_ and Chianti and _zabaglione_--a pale-brown custard flavored like honey and served in tall, thin, curving glasses--while the fat proprietress, in a red shawl and a large brooch, came to ask them, "Everyt'ing all-aright, eh?" Carl insisted that Walter MacMonnies, the aviator, had once tried out a motor that was exactly like her, including the Italian accent. There was simple and complete bliss for them in the dingy pine-and-plaster room, adorned with fly-specked calendars and pictures of Victor Emmanuel and President McKinley, copies of the _Bolletino Della Sera_ and large vinegar bottles. The theater was their destination, but they first loitered up Broadway, shamelessly stopping to stare at shop windows, pretending to be Joe the shoe-clerk and Becky the cashier furnishing a Bronx flat. Whether it was anything but a game to Ruth will never be known; but to Carl there was a hidden high excitement in planning a flower-box for the fire-escape. Apropos of nothing, she said, as they touched elbows with the sweethearting crowd: "You were right. I'm sorry I ever felt superior to what I called 'common people.' People! I love them all. It's----Come, we must hurry. I hate to miss that one perfect second when the orchestra is quiet and the lights wink at you and the curtain's going up." During the second act of the play, when the heroine awoke to love, Carl's hand found hers. And it must have been that night when, standing between the inner and outer doors of her house, Carl put his arms about her, kissed her hair, timidly kissed her sweet, cold cheek, and cried, "Bless you, dear." But, for some reason, he does not remember when he did first kiss her, though he had looked forward to that miracle for weeks. He does not understand the reason; but there is the fact. Her kisses were big things to him, yet possibly there were larger psychological changes which occulted everything else, at first. But it must have been on that night that he first kissed her. For certainly it was when he called on her a week later that he kissed her for the second time. They had been animated but decorous, that evening a week later. He had tried to play an improvisation called "The Battle of San Juan Hill," with a knowledge of the piano limited to the fact that if you struck alternate keys at the same time, there appeared not to be a discord.