He was rather surprised by her reaction. She did not answer at once, but looked down, as if she were considering.

“May I have a little time?” she said at last.

“Time? Certainly.” He frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” She seemed to hesitate, and looked troubled.

“Perhaps you do not like me.”

“Salvatore, you are the best man I have ever met. I am honored by your proposal. I did not say no.”

“It’s your parents, isn’t it? I will speak to your father.”

“No.” She smiled. “Not yet. Give me a little time, Salvatore, and I will give you my answer.”

That was all she would say. Somewhat confused, he returned to New York.

A week passed before he spoke to her again. When he called the house she answered the telephone herself. She sounded very friendly. But when he said he was thinking of going out to Long Island on Sunday, she said her parents required her to be at home that day, so he decided not to go.

It was on the following Thursday that Uncle Luigi came in excitedly. He had received a telephone call at the restaurant from Long Island. The Carusos had received visitors.

“Teresa and her parents,” he told Salvatore. “She brought them over so that Angelo could make a drawing of her father—they paid him for it, too. Her father and mother spent time with your parents, and it seems they got on famously. They are friends already.”

And hearing this, Salvatore was lost in admiration for the girl he loved. Clearly, he’d been right; there had been objections raised about his family. Now, on a simple pretext, she had got her parents to his family’s house, and let them discover that they liked the Carusos. She was paving the way for their marriage.

He waited eagerly for her next move.

The weather grew warmer in April, and Angelo grew stronger. At the end of the second week, he returned to the city and announced he was ready to work. He certainly looked well.

The building site where Salvatore was working stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth. Mr. French was the developer and had decided that the building was to bear his name—with good reason, for it was going to be one of the loveliest skyscrapers ever built.

To prevent New York from becoming a great grid of dark canyons, the city had insisted that skyscrapers could not arise vertically from the boundaries of their sites, but that at specified heights there must be setbacks to let the light in. At its crudest, this sometimes caused builders to raise skyscrapers that looked like upturned telescopes. But architects had soon seen that this was an opportunity to create complex patterns with elegant steps, shelves and cutaways. The French building was nearing completion, and with its carved bronze entrance, inspired by the Ishtar Gate, and its high terraces like hanging gardens, it might have come from ancient Babylon. Passing through its rich art deco lobbies was like entering a temple. But most lovely to Salvatore was the soaring facade of warm orange brick, trimmed with deep red and black at the edges. There was no other brickwork like that in New York.