Max Disher wants to be the first volunteer to try Dr. Junius Crookman's new treatment, which allegedly turns a Black person's appearance completely white. When he's seen with his own eyes that the treatment works, he waits impatiently for the facility to be ready. He wants to go back from New York to Atlanta and marry the white woman he'd fallen in love with down there, who'd rejected him. Sure enough, when he emerges from the treatment, he is white as can be. He is overjoyed. Reporters are clamoring for his story, and he agrees to sell it to the _Scimitar _for a thousand dollars. He takes the reporter out to dinner for his first evening as a white man but finds to his dismay that the white clubs are full of forced performative enjoyment, a disappointing contrast to the easy grace and deep enjoyment of folks in Black dance halls.

Max can't help but go back to Harlem and pop into his friends' joint to show them what he's done. The doorman tries to send him away, and he has to call his friend out to prove he's still the same person. They marvel at his treatment but lament his approaching departure. All of them can feel the distance that color has now broached between them. When Max goes to collect his things from his boardinghouse the matron shames him for having no 'race pride'. But heading out to the train station, to ride in a Pullman car rather than as a porter for the first time, Max is content and excited for his future ahead.