On their fourth meeting a furious quarrel developed. Dodo had expected that, with the difficulties of the reconciliation resolved, their relations would be resumed where they had been interrupted. She found, to her surprise, that only a new conflict had opened. She did not divine at once all the hesitation of his character, but she perceived an opposition which amazed her. In her infatuation, she wished to run heedlessly, with bandaged eyes and hungry arms, into these enchanted gardens of her imagination. She did not wish to visualize facts, hungrily seeking the satisfaction of undefined illusions. That he should follow gravely, with troubled searching glance, aroused in her a storm of resentment. She little guessed at what price he paid for his self-control. She could not comprehend this resistance in him. What was it held him back? He spoke of everything but the one vital issue—themselves. Unconsciously she felt herself forced to fasten to him, as instinctively she felt him seeking escape. But always, while thus led to compel him on she refused to consider where the road might lead.

Massingale, in fact, in the moments of her absence, was continually torn between his impulses and his logic. Logically he saw the danger without an attempt at subterfuge. He did not believe in her, and he was certain that at the last crucial test she would never break through conventionalities; but he foresaw that the true danger lay, not in her romanesque imagination, but in the hunger that would awaken in him. Even the appearance of evil must always be inscribed to his account by that judgment of society that never goes below the surface and would persist in seeing in the present situation only an inexperienced young girl and a man of the world, married, who pursued.

By every reason he sought to liberate his imagination, and only succeeded in enmeshing himself the more securely in the silk imprisonment. To each clear and warning argument a memory rose victoriously, confounding reason and bringing new longings. When in her presence, he found the study of this perplexing and ardent disciple of youth, who had darted across into his life out of nowhere, one of endless mystification and satisfaction. He forgot all his resolves in the sensation of gazing into the profoundly troubling blue of her glance, watching the divine subtleties of that smile which began in the twinkling corners of her eyes and glided, with always a note of arch malice, to the childlike lips. Sometimes he incited her to assumed anger in order to watch the sudden lights that awakened in the cloudy eyes, the sharp little teeth, brilliant against the parted red of the lips, the heightened danger-signals on the cheek. And when, in curious restaurants, removed from the prying gaze of Mrs. Grundy, they ensconced themselves, laughing with the delight of truants at finding a hiding-place, the slight pressure of her foot against his, a moment offered and a moment gone, created new philosophies in his logical brain, and he repeated to himself again and again that he would change all to be a young cub, as the young fellows who surrounded them, starting life undaunted and free. To have the right, or to do no harm!

Often, watching her sparkling mood, that showed itself in a dozen laughing tricks with cutlery or glass, mystified, he asked himself:

"Does she realize what this means?"

There lay this great difference between them—he sought gloomily to foresee the end, she was in raptures only at the beginning. In this period which preceded the inevitable one when he would find subterfuge and evasion to put his conscience to sleep, a period in which he still felt the closing of the trap on his liberty, and saw clearly because he still wished to resist, Massingale asked himself logically where each step would lead. How long could his embottled control be kept to phrases? And when, in one combustible moment, he should obey the longing to recall that hour when, conquering her, she had conquered him, what would follow?

Shrinking from the thought of another solution, he asked himself once or twice if, under her artless insouciance, there was not a deep calculation; or if, indeed, she were planning to upset everything in his life, drag him into the publicity of the divorce courts, create a new home, dissolve old habits, estrange old friends, and fasten on him new ones. He thought thus, not because he thought honestly, but because he wished to recoil from immediate responsibility.

Dodo had not the slightest care of the future. The next month or the next week did not exist; the day sufficed. She raised no questions; she contented herself rapturously with emotions.

"He will come at five—how many hours more? He will be here at five—where shall we go for dinner? Where can we be alone? He will come—"

Her mind satisfied itself with such speculations. If, at this time, he had again asked her seriously what would come of it all, she probably would have answered him pettishly, like a gay child:

"Oh, don't let's talk of annoying things."

He began a hundred comedies of resistance, some of which she detected scornfully, others which eluded, in their subtlety, her analysis. There were times when, uneasy at the growing responsibility that she was slowly drawing about his shoulders, he tried by artful questions to convince himself that she was not quite so innocent as he had believed.

"And how do you put off Sassoon all this time, and Harrigan Blood?" he asked her once, abruptly.

It was their fourth successive evening together. They had gone to the "Hickory Log," a chop-house on lower Seventh Avenue, secure of finding privacy. The walls had been decorated to simulate ancient Greenwich village; the floor, fenced off with green palings, affording convenient nooks. In the back, before a spacious open oven, chickens and steaks were turning savorously over glowing hickory embers, that mingled their clean pungent perfume with appetizing odors. Up-stairs, in special rooms, some East Side club was noisily celebrating over a chop supper, while from time to time two or three young men in white berets and coats came singing down the turning stairs, saluting gaily the sympathetic audience.

Below, everywhere was the feeling of the people, happy, prosperous, relaxed, feasting on heavy bourgeois dishes flanked by huge bumpers of the beer which made the "Hickory Log" a Mecca for the thirsty. The floor was sanded, the tables bare of cloth. Opposite them a young man had his arm about his sweetheart, bending his head to her ear. When a group of the revelers saluted them with enthusiasm, each returned a laughing acknowledgment, but without change of pose.

"How natural all this is!" said Dodo, finding in her hungry soul a kindred longing. "How they enjoy things! We must come here often. This garden, this table—it shall be ours!"

"And how do you keep Sassoon and Blood in good appetite, little Mormon?" he persisted.

She hated this incredulous cynical mood of his, and she disapproved of the epithet.

"Why do you always begin like this?" she said, chopping off the head of a celery stalk with a vicious blow of her knife. "I am not a Mormon, and you know perfectly well that no one else exists now for me!" She turned, saw his quizzical look, and added vigorously: "And I am not acting!"

"Do, please. It is your great charm!"

"You are positively hateful!"

"Well, why did you encourage Sassoon, then?" She looked at him with a little malice in her eyes.

"I suppose you want to think yourself one of many?"

This was too near the mark. He answered evasively:

"All I wish is to be your father confessor, you know!"

This simulation of friendship was another thing that always aroused her. She wished to punish him, and began to embroider.

"Yes, I encourage Sassoon," she said, leaning on the table, nodding in emphasis, and switching a celery stalk among the glasses venomously, like the tail of an irritated leopard. "Harrigan Blood, too. And I have my reasons. You think I am a wild little creature who never looks ahead. Quite wrong! Everything is planned out. Everything will be settled—definitely—soon!"

"When?"

"On my twenty-third birthday—on the tenth of March. Remember that date!"

"Very appropriate month," he interjected.

"Then I am through with this sort of a life—good-by forever to Dodo!" she went on rapidly. "You don't believe me? I assure you, I never was more serious! Then I shall choose"—she raised her fingers, counting—"a great love, marriage, career, or"—she ended with a shrug—"lots of money!"

"I see," he said, comprehending her maneuver, and yet annoyed by it. "And so Sassoon is a possibility?"

"If you fail, quite a possibility!" she said, to irritate him further. "At any rate, I shall keep him just where I want him—until the time comes to decide!"

"You could never do that, Dodo!" he said sharply.

"Oh, couldn't I?" she cried, delighted that he had entertained the thought. "I'm quite capable of being a cold-blooded little adventuress! Perhaps I am one, and am only making sport of you. Beware! As for Sassoon—do you know what I'd do? I'd make him give me a career, and then, when I am very, very well known, perhaps—if I wanted—I'd make him divorce, and become Mrs. Sassoon! How would you like to meet me in society?" She laughed at the thought, but added immediately: "Oh, it is not so impossible, either! Nowadays, a clever girl who sees just what she wants can do anything!"

"Is that what you would do with me?" he said quietly.

She turned swiftly, abandoning all her pretense, pain in her eyes.

"Oh, no, Your Honor! Not with you! I would take nothing from you, now or ever!"

"Then don't say such things!" he said, strangely soothed by the passion in her voice.

"Don't be—friendly, then!" she retorted, and with a quick appealing raising of her eyes she laid her hand on his.

"I must talk frankly with her!" he said to himself, with a groaning of the spirit. "She will not face the situation, and there can be no solution to it—no possible solution!" He turned heroically, resolved to lay down the law, and his stern eyes encountered hers, so troubling and so untroubled, tempting and yielding—glorified and inconscient.

"I am so happy!" she said; and, in an excess of emotion, as if suffocating, her eyes closed and her breast rose in a long sigh. Arguments and fears went riotously head over heels in flight.

It was almost at the end of the dinner before, his calm returning, he said:

"Let's talk of your career. Do you know, I believe you'd do big things!"

She glanced up suspiciously, judging the tone rather than the words.

"You say that because you wish to get rid of me!" she said abruptly.

He protested vehemently to the contrary.

"Yes, yes, you would! I'm beginning to know you and your tricks! But look out! I warn you, you will never get rid of me!" She rose impatiently. "I don't like it here. We do nothing but quarrel. Come!" Outside his automobile was waiting. "No, no; let's walk a little. It's good to be among people who are natural!"

"I have a meeting I can not put off—at nine; I told you," he said, irritated and impatient to be free.

It was cold, with a sharp, dry, exhilarating sting. The shop-windows were set with glaring enticements for the Christmas season—red and green or sparkling with tinsel and gold ornament. The sidewalks were alive with the sluggish loitering of a strange people, Italians, Germans, Jews from Russia, negroes flowing in from dark side streets, occasional Irish about the saloons, whose doors swung busily; but the signs above the shops were foreign, without trace of the first Anglo-Saxon emigration which had passed on to the upper city.

Everything interested DorÉ. She wished to stop at every window, mingling with the urchins and the curious, prying into cellars whence the odor of onions or leather came to their nostrils. He yielded his arm, following her whims, and yet unamused. A policeman saluted him, grinning sympathetically at the spectacle of His Honor unbending. Massingale did not look back, but he divined, with annoyance, the smile and the interpretation. All this sodden or abject world, which passed before his eyes day in and day out, with its unanswerable indictments, its bottomless misery, left on him a very different impression. He saw in it the quicksands of life, where those who steered their course without foresight sometimes disappeared, closed over by floods of mediocrity and poverty. Natural and happy? He felt in it only a horror and a threat. On his arm the touch of the young girl grew imperiously heavy, that touch which stopped him abruptly or forced him ahead, unwilling, bored and reluctant.

"I could be happy here—very happy!" she said romantically. There was something in this that recalled the few regretted sides of her early life. Sorrow was sorrow, and joy pure delight, and each walked here, unhesitating and unashamed, unhampered by little spying social codes or the artifices of manners. Her hand slipped down his arm to where his was plunged in his pocket, closing over it.

"It's wonderful! So free, so honest! Don't you adore the feeling?"

"No!" he said abruptly. He had been thinking of a college mate of his who had broken through the permitted of society and married where he should not have: a forgotten friend who had dropped out, who might have ended,—who knows?—in a howling stuffy flat in just such a quarter.

She drew her hand impatiently away.

"I hate you to-night! I won't keep you any longer. Take me home!"

In his own automobile, surrounded by the atmosphere of things he knew and enjoyed, Massingale felt an easier mood. Besides, her indifference and flashes of temper always exercised a provocative effect.

"What a little whirligig you are, Dodo," he said, laughing. "Happy there? You wouldn't last an afternoon! Besides, romance is one thing, but think of the dirt!"

"You want to antagonize me; you've done it all evening!" she said, drawing into her corner.

He defended himself lamely, aware of the truth.

"Never mind!" she added vindictively. "I shall amuse myself to-night."

"Sassoon or Harrigan Blood?" he said, pinching her ear.

"Perhaps."

She refused to be enticed from her offended dignity. When they reached Miss Pim's, contrary to his determination, he descended and went up-stairs with her, seeking, with a quick pity in his heart, to repair the effects of his ill-humor. Then, judging the moment auspicious, he began gravely:

"Dodo, where is this going to end?"

"What? Which?" she said, frowning and whirling about, as if she had not understood.

He repeated the question with even more seriousness.

"I want to be genuine!" she said, stamping her foot. "I don't want to be dissecting everything I do before I do it! Whatever comes, I want it to come without calculation!"

He groaned aloud.

"Hopeless! Crazy! Impossible child!"

"It's you who are impossible!" she retorted hotly. "It's you who are neither one thing nor the other! It's you who back and fill! I am honest; you're not! What are you thinking of all the time—your wife?"

His sense of decorum was shocked.

"Dodo, kindly leave my wife's name out of the conversation!"

"And why should I leave it out?" she answered furiously. "She's the one thing that comes between us! I hate her! I despise her! I could kill her!"

"Dodo!"

"Do you love her? No! Do you care that for her? No! Or she for you? No! Well, then, why shouldn't I discuss her?"

When she fell into a passion, he no longer heard what words she said, fascinated by the impetuosity of the emotion that shook her—man-like, longing to have it translated into clinging in his arms. He felt himself beaten in this discussion where no logic was possible, and he said desperately that he would no longer quibble or avoid issues, that he would lay the truth before her, and pronounce ugly names. But, before he could venture, the telephone interrupted. She went to it joyfully, seeking a new means of tantalizing him.

He sought to catch some inkling of the man at the other end, but her ingenuity evaded him. Presently she leaned out of the hall, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

"You are sure you have to go to that meeting?" she said, in a dry staccato.

"Sure!"

Then her voice rose again, answering the telephone.

"Yes, indeed—free.... Delighted.... Oh, longing for a spree.... How gorgeous! How soon?" She turned, glancing at Massingale.

He took up his hat, answering with asperity:

"Immediately!"

When she returned, they stood eying each other, rage in their hearts.

"Thank heaven, now I shall enjoy myself!" she said abruptly.

"And who is the gentleman?" he said.

"Any one you like; it's quite indifferent to me!"

"In that case, good-by!"

"Good-by—good-by!"

"Good! Now I am free," he thought, with a sudden liberation of the spirit, resolved to make this a pretext for his emancipation. He went to the door, but there a little shame made him halt. If this was to be the end, he wished to leave behind a memory of gentleness and courtesy. He returned and held out his hand, saying:

"I have been rather ill-humored—"

She looked up at him solemnly, hostility still reflected from his defensive antagonism. They had so opposed and tantalized each other all evening that all their nerves were on edge, vacillating toward a sudden obliterating reaction. He did not take her hand; his arms instead clutched her whole body to him, closing furiously over what he had resisted futilely all the day—every day since that first disorganizing embrace, until he could resist no longer. Her arms caught him. She gave a little cry that ended on his lips, her whole body relaxed, half turned and half fallen, as he bent over her.

This kiss, wrenched from him at the moment he felt himself strongest, obliterating useless exasperation and futile combat, ended his resistance. From his soul the eternal rebel cry of the transgressor went up:

"Ah, I must live!"

The moments slipped by unheeded, and still he held her, imprisoned. All the stifled side of his nature started up. It seemed to him that all the genuine in his life was in this kiss: the denied ardent self; the young Massingale and the girl he had adored in his first extravagant passion: the Massingale in revolt, surrendering to the fear of the world, clasped in the last renunciation with the woman who might have been—the past and more than the past, the present and the exquisite pain of time, youth renounced and youth fleeting. He raised her, convulsively strained to his breast, closing his eyes, and breathing the same air that came to her, as if pursuing on her lips the last precious dregs of a cup that was almost drained.

"By heaven, I've done all I could! I'm not going to fight any more!" he said, in a rage at her, at himself, at life.

And as, erect, he held his head from her the better to study the faint face, the closed eyes and the parted lips, her body swayed toward his, one arm wrapping about him, one arm winding about his throat, the fingers closing over his shoulders like the tendrils of ivy, that subtle feminine vine that fastens itself to the monarchs of the forests, stealing their strength. Even in this moment he felt in her this fatality, but a fatality that drew him recklessly, gratefully on.

All at once she had a sensation of fear—as if the victory were over and another conflict were on. She sought to free herself, seeking air to breathe, afraid of herself, of these half lights, neither day nor the glaring night, of every vibrant sense, warned by some still unmastered instinct within her, that struggled through the dizziness in her mind and body.

She wrenched herself from him, springing behind a table, and once liberated, feeling an instantaneous buoyancy of triumph. He stood quietly, breathing deep, locking and unlocking his hands. She stood, as free as though a canon separated them, watching him, her hands folded poignantly at her throat, her body leaning toward him, victorious, mentally alert.

"Oh, Your Honor, Your Honor, what's the use!" she cried. "You care—you do care! Say that you care!"

His answer was an exclamation, inarticulate, convincing, a cry rather than a word! The next moment, transformed, no longer calm, restrained, judicial, but tempestuous, revealing and defenseless, he stepped forward with a threatening gesture.

"Dodo, if you are acting! If you—"

"Ah, that's how I like you!" she cried rapturously, flinging out her arms. "No, no—fear nothing; I am not acting! You will see! You will be satisfied! When I tell you my plan—a wonderful, beautiful plan—Only, first I must be sure!"

She was transformed, radiant; but on her glowing face and glorified eyes he saw, with a return of incredulity, the elfish lights of the dramatizer.

He stood angry, perplexed, defiant, examining her with distrust. All at once he passed the table abruptly, caught her as she sprang away, turned her in his arms fiercely, roughly, pinned her arms to her sides furiously, more in anger than passion, covered her cheeks, her eyes, her lips with kisses, and suddenly, almost flinging her from him, rushed out of the room.

She rose from the sofa where she had fallen, listening breathlessly, a little frightened, satisfied at last. Then suddenly she ran to the window, flinging it open, leaning out, happy, victorious, eager. He did not see her; he was rushing down the steps abruptly, flinging himself into his car, departing quickly.

The reaction from all the petty miseries of the spirit which she had suffered in these days of fencing and resistance had been so acute that she returned in a perfect delirium of delight. Even the tragic shadow that hung about it heightened the heroism of their infatuation. At last she had shaken off the tentacles of the dreaded commonplace. She might suffer; what did it matter? All her life might pay for it; she did not care! It was not an ordinary bread-and-butter affection. It would be magnificent, like the great loves of history, tragic but magnificent! And the solution she had hinted of to Massingale, the end which she had imagined in her romanesque, runaway mind was something that seemed so supremely great, so extraordinary, that she abandoned herself into its misty vistas without doubt or hesitation, radiant, convinced.

"Ah, now I know—now I know what the answer is!" she cried rapturously. She went to the hostile window, shaking her fist at it triumphantly: "Ugly wall, horrid wall, hateful wall! You are beaten! I am no longer afraid of you! That for you!"

And snapping her fingers, laughing gaily, she returned, whirling on her toes like a child, crying:

"He cares—he does care!"

But the moods into which she had flung herself had resulted in such an intoxication of all her emotional self that she forgot her first resolve to remain quiet. She felt the need of more excitement: lights, music, movement, noise! She was too exhilarated, too tensely throbbing with conquest and recklessness. She could never remain now alone and still. She resolved to go out, for a little while only, for an hour or so. On her table was a note from Lindaberry, unopened. She had seen it on her first return. She saw it now in all her whirling progress about the room, imperative, appealing. But did she not go to it. It represented to her a self that she wished to avoid just now—for this bewildering night of senses and emotions. It was another world, the world of the hushed spaces and tranquil shadows, where her vibrant theatric self could not rest. So she let the letter lie unopened, fearing an imperative call, conscience-stricken at the neglect of these last days. When she returned at three o'clock, fatigued at last, she went precipitately to the letter, carrying it to the gas-jet, with an uneasy glance at Snyder, who was moving restlessly in a dream.

"Dear Dodo:

"Pretty tough going. Tried to get you many times. What's the matter? Tried to get you many times. Is the bet off? Wouldn't blame you. Will stop at ten sharp. At exactly ten. If you could—it would mean a lot. You see, it's—well, it's a backsliding day—at first, you know, hard going.

"Garry."

The slight waver in the handwriting, the repeated stumbling phrases, told her everything. In a fever of remorse and self-accusation, she flung herself on her knees at her bedside, vowing that never again would she fail him, come what might, resolved to run to him the first thing in the morning and repair the damages she had selfishly inflicted. She prayed fervently, accusing herself, unable to control her tears. Snyder, in the dim luminous reflection from the windows, bolt upright in her bed, watched her breathlessly, unperceived.

The next morning, when, after vain calls at the telephone, she went to Lindaberry's apartments, the janitor, with a shrug of his shoulders, informed her that he had not returned. It was not unusual: sometimes he was gone for four days, a week—God knew where!