She looked so surprised at this that a thin smile came over his lips. "There are a dozen men I can call on who will do you that slight service!" he said grimly. "Listen! Let it be so! I will procure you a husband, a very convenient, manageable husband, who will appear and disappear. You'll become Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith, and after a few months you can divorce. You will then be, in the eyes of the world, perfectly qualified to do whatever you please, without danger of criticism. That's society for you!" "So that's the way it is done!" she thought, quite excited. For a brief moment she let herself go into the rôle he had opened for her, wondering if it were possible--if, under any circumstance, even if Massingale should utterly fail her, she could succeed as he had prophesied. "Really," she said, amazed, "you have men who would sell themselves for that?" "Do you wish to see?" he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It can be done to-night!" "To-night?" "You don't believe me? I'll telephone now; I'll have your future husband here in half an hour. Would you like to see him?" "Not to-night!" she said, laughing. Then, pushing back, she added: "Are you through?" "Not quite." He rose, took from his pocketbook two bills of a thousand dollars each, and laid them beside her plate. "What's this for?" she asked, raising her eyes. "For the pleasure you have given me, Miss Baxter, in permitting me to take dinner with you," he answered, smiling. "Just for that?" she said ironically. "Just for that!" he repeated. He drew back toward the window. "You see, it was not so dangerous, after all. If you will get your things now, we shall go!" Her sense of the dramatic was struck. "Ah, that's very clever of you!" she said, quite excited. Two thousand dollars just for the favor of dining with her! How subtly he proclaimed what she might expect in the future! The bills were horribly real, seeming to adhere to her fingers. She repeated, wildly stirred: "Very clever!" He came closer to her, with veiled eagerness. "Well, what is it to be?" She left the money on the table, answering quietly: "You know, don't you?" "You will--" "No!--of course!" He frowned impatiently. "Think it over!" "There's no need!" "How much do you want? Come, tell me!" he said roughly, with a brutality from which the mask had been withdrawn. She laughed triumphantly at the reappearance of the true Sassoon. "Ah, I would be very expensive!" "I don't care!" "You haven't enough!" "What!" he cried angrily, trying to seize her wrist. "You are fool enough to refuse? You can have anything you want. I will make you anything!" "Sassoon, it's the man!" she said scornfully. He drew back, red with anger. "What do you mean?"