Chapter 7 is obviously the shortest Chapter in the novel, only about two pages long, but it contains a key scene: During the walk that Utterson and Enfield take, they find themselves before that same door which prompted Enfield to relate the story of his encounter with Hyde in Chapter 1. Likewise, here are the three windows that were half-open in Jekyll's laboratory, described in Chapter 5. Now the reader is fully aware of the significance of the front of Jekyll's house with its great facade and its elegant interior, as contrasted to the back entrance (Hyde's entrance), with its dilapidated structure.
Some readers and students feel cheated that Stevenson does not fully reveal what Utterson saw at the window in Jekyll's face just before Jekyll slams the window down and disappears. We must only assume that suddenly Jekyll takes on some of Hyde's traits, and that now both Utterson and Enfield have had a glimpse of the duality of man, of the evil that resides in the soul of man. But whereas Lanyon was a man who could not tolerate such an insight, Utterson and Enfield both belong to a different world. Enfield is "that man about town" who has theoretically seen many sorts of things, and Utterson, from the first pages, is a man who is not quick to judge his fellow man. Yet each of these men, upon seeing something in Dr. Jekyll's face, feel "abject terror and despair" and what they see freezes "the very blood of the two gentlemen."
