"A moment--a moment to change my dress; ready in ten minutes!" She ran quickly to trunk and bureau, gathering up her articles of dress; disappearing behind a screen in the corner. Massingale, after a calculating glance at the figure of Snyder, rigid in the window, sat down, drawing a magazine to him. He no longer felt the unease he had experienced at the woman's first interruption. It seemed so natural to be there, in the musty high room, littered with trunks, with its patches of carpet and incongruous wall-paper. In the closet, behind a discreetly closed door, Dodo was laughing at her narrow quarters. Outside, through the windows, the marshaled city was setting its lights for Christmas Eve--thousands on thousands of human beings disciplined under the old order of what is called right and wrong, the millions who never really entered _his_ life and for whose approval his every word and action must be calculated. "Snyder, come and button me!" called Dodo, emerging from the closet behind the screen. She felt nothing unusual in this hidden change of dress, but to him the touch of intimacy aroused more than his curiosity. When they descended to the closed car, gaily brushing the snowflakes from each other, a little moved by all that had passed, feeling, too, the obliterating unrealities of dark streets and lights glistening amid the obscurity, he said: "Dodo, I wish it could be!" "It can, it can!" she answered impulsively, excited at his approach to consent. "The world's too big for us!" "Some men would have the courage!" "The trouble is, I am born under a curse," he said moodily. "I'm limited--a gentleman: that's the best and the worst of me!" "A gentleman!" she repeated scornfully. "Yes, that's the whole of it! That's why you're afraid of everything--why you'll never, never dare!" "That's true, Dodo!" "And what is a gentleman?" she asked angrily. He looked beyond her at the lighted windows of his club, arrogantly set in judgment over the multitude on the avenue, and answered, in mockery: "A gentleman, Dodo, is one who is a gentleman because he associates with those who are gentlemen because they associate with him!" She did not laugh at this; there was more below it than the sarcasm. Presently she drew his hand into hers. "How much you need me, Your Honor!" she said softly. "What is the rest worth? Let me guide you!" He did not reply. In fact, he knew too well that he had surrendered already, and in that moment, he said to himself that he would take his courage in his hands--that now, before the week had ended, he would go to his wife and claim from her his liberty, whatever her terms.