"Sassoon! Beast!" she gasped, choking with rage. She flung her dress in a corner, and plunged her arms and head into the wash-basin, scrubbing them with a towel as if they could not be cleansed--as if nothing could ever cleanse them again. Then suddenly she fell into a fit of hysterical weeping. Snyder, frightened, camped at her side, pressing her to her breast, calling her childish names, implored her to be calm. When at last, from sheer fatigue, she had grown quiet, she refused all questions, unwilling to talk; all at once solemn, determined, as controlled and impassive as a moment before she had been disorganized and frantic. Snyder, amazed, watched her as if she were a statue. "You're all right now?" "All right!" "You can't tell me? Nothing?" "Nothing!" At the end of a moment she turned thoughtfully. "Come to lunch, just in Lexington Avenue?" "Sure, petty!" "I have no money." "Shut up! I have lots!" "Good! Now, don't talk to me, Snyder! I don't want to talk!" The woman nodded, uneasy and suspicious, moving about her way, but never losing sight of the girl. Dodo went to the trunk, took out Lindaberry's letters, and returned to the window. Outside it was raining by fits and starts, in swerving sheets, wind-driven, with the restlessness of March. Handfuls of drops flung against the panes with sudden rattling crescendo. She opened the last letter and read it without emotion, in a dull, listless, painless, concentration. It began, "Dodo, my good angel," and it announced the thing she had feared--his imminent return. "He will get over it!" she said, staring down the avenue, where the rain-drops rebounded from the asphalt like myriads of shimmering insects, swarming hungrily. "He will get over it, and he will live his own life, and he will end by being grateful to me!" She remained silent a long while, wondering, thinking of Massingale, of Blainey, watching the leaden clouds breaking and rolling above, feeling the spray that lashed the window, cooling her cheeks, fascinated by the rain-drops that swarmed, like myriad white insects, dancing below. There was so much to do--and she was unable to do anything. At twelve she rose quietly, telephoned to Blainey for an afternoon appointment, signaled Snyder and led the way to luncheon. She went to the theater by the subway on account of a famished pocketbook, and the depressing sensation of damp ankles and muddied skirts, which came to her as she clung to her umbrella and leaned against the wind, reinforced her determination to come to actualities. "Hello! This is a surprise!" he said, when at last she had come, with dripping umbrella, into his office. "Must have got my dates mixed!" "No! It's I who am tired of waiting!" she said abruptly.