"Snyder! Snyder! If you've ever prayed for me—pray now!"
She drew her veil hurriedly over her tortured white face, and went rapidly away into the night.
EPILOGUE
And what became of Dodo? Did she completely change—in a twinkling, and changing by the divine dispensation of being a woman, forget that other turbulent self? Only once again did she return into the hazardous life of old—a last flash of the dramatic impulse—and the adventure came close to a final tragedy. Six months after that rainy March night when she had gone weakly into the rain on Garry's imperious arm, she set foot in New York once more.
Perhaps it was the tragic splendor of these Towers of Babel aflame against the night, after all the grim months of victorious struggle and abnegation; perhaps it was something deeper within her that drove her to slip from the sober cloak of matrimony and once again try the perilous paths of the Salamander.
At three o'clock the next afternoon, she left her hotel, after procuring a promise from her husband that he would not attempt to follow her. Below Jock Lindaberry's automobile was waiting, a footman at the door. She gave the familiar number of Miss Pim's on lower Madison and sank against the cushioned back. A mirror caught her reflection and she gazed with a queer tugging sensation of the incongruities of time. It was Dodo and it was not Dodo at all. The figure was still fragile, the alert poised eagerness was still in the glance and the arch mischief in the smile, but that was all. The old rebellion, the recklessness, the nervous unrest were gone. She looked incredulously upon a woman of the world, soberly attired in blues and blacks, correctly bonneted and veiled, a woman at peace, pensive and settled, with a note of authority. She gazed long with memory haunted eyes, half inclined to laughter and half verging on tears. Now that she had set recklessly out in search of the past, she began to experience a little doubt. Familiar corners, a glimpse of a restaurant, ways by which she had so often returned, brought her a strange disturbance. Which was real, Dodo Baxter or the present Mrs. Lindaberry?
At the door she dismissed the automobile, aware of sudden eyes in windows above and climbed the brownstone steps. The emotion of familiarity was so instantaneous that absent-mindedly she found herself seeking in her purse for a departed latch-key. Not Josephus but another darky answered her ring. On the hat-rack was a disordered heap of letters which other girls tremulously would come to sort. In the musty parlor with its Sunday solemnity a couple were whispering, sinking their voices in sudden consciousness at her arrival. She groped her way into the obscurity of the stairs, thinking with a little melancholy of the girl and the man below, playing the old, old game. On the second landing, from the room that once was Ida's, another girl in hasty kimono was saying,
"You answer—tell him I went out with another man—make out I'm furious—"
She caught herself at Dodo's rustling coming, eying her curiously and then as though reassured ended, "If he responds with a bid for dinner, grab it!"